





V*. 






1 









^ ^ 



00 






























jtetiv s 












V*- 



*f> 









0> ^ 






'-/ 






•^ 






"P 



























- 



"Seek ye the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto 
you"— Luke XIL: 31. 



MORAL EDUCATION: 



ITS LAWS AND METHODS. 



Governments, Churches and Colleges for many thousand 

years have striven in vain to conquer crime, disease, 

and Misery — A New Method must therefore be 

adopted — If that Method can be found in 

this volume, does it not indicate 

a better future for Humanity? 



JOSEPH RODES BUCHANAN, M.D., 

Author of "System of Anthropology'' Editor of Buchanan 's Journal of Man 
and Professor of Physiology and Institutes of Medicine in four Medical 
Colleges, successively frorn 1846 to 188 1 ; Discover er of Cerebral Im- 
pressibility ■, and of the Sciences of Psychometry and Sarcognomy. 



6 

NEW YORK : ^> OFWAS 

Printed for the Author by 
W. GREEN'S SON, Printer, Electrotyper and Binder, 
74 and 76 Beekman Street. 



K 






t- 






Copyright, 
By JOSEPH RODES BUCHANAN. 



TO THE READER. 



For more than a third of a century the doctrines 
illustrated in this volume have been cherished by the 
author, when there were few to sympathize with him. 
To-day there are thousands by whom many of these 
ideas are cherished, who are ready to welcome their 
expression, and whose enthusiastic approbation justi- 
fies the hope that these great truths may ere long per- 
vade the educational system of the English-speaking 
race, and extend their beneficent power not only 
among European races, but among the Oriental na- 
tions, who are rousing from the torpor of ages. May 
I not hope that every philanthropist who realizes the 
importance of the principles here presented will aid 
in their diffusion by circulating this volume? 

The Author. 



CONTENTS. 



Chap. Page 

I. The Essential Elements of a Liberal Education ....... i 

II. Moral Education 25 

III. Evolution of Genius 55 

IV. Ethical Culture 86 

V. Ethical Principles and Training . , 109 

VI. Relation of Ethical to Religious Education . . , . 135 

VII. Relations of Ethical to Intellectual Education. ....... 150 

VIII. Relations of Ethical to Practical Education , 18S 

IX. Sphere and Education of Woman 227 

X. Moral Education and Peace 270 

XI. The Educational Crisis. . . * „ 293 

XII. Ventilation and Health 346 

The Pantological University 390 

The Management of Children — by Mrs. Elizabeth 

Thompson 393 



INTRODUCTION. 



The signal failure of educational systems to elevate 
the social condition of mankind, and the development 
of the higher intelligence and wiser philanthropy which 
demand something better, make the present eminently 
the proper time for a fundamental change. 

A system of education substantially identical in its 
spirit and aim with those which prevailed over twenty 
centuries ago in Greece and Rome (being merely a 
limited intellectual culture) is very far behind the de- 
mands of modern philanthropy and intelligence. It 
belongs to the intellectual condition of that old period 
which college students are still taught to venerate, 
when Nature was supposed to consist of the four ele- 
ments, earth, air, fire and water; when the magnitude 
and rotundity of the earth were unknown; when the 
stellar universe was considered a mysterious accom- 
paniment of the flat earth; when the climates, oceans 
and continents of earth were still unexplored, the 
vegetable and animal kingdoms almost unknown and 
the structure of the globe totally unknown; when the 
structure and functions of the human body were 
mysteries, and the attributes of soul and body being 
alike an inaccessible mystery, their culture and de- 
velopment were necessarily either neglected or blindly 
and aimlessly undertaken. In such a condition the 
school could do nothing but cultivate language, ora- 
tory, history and speculation. 

The immense progress of modern society beyond 
the ignorance of the ancients has been a progress in 



VI INTRODUCTION, 

everything but that which specially concerns educa- 
tion, and education therefore stagnates with its basic 
sciences. In all that concerns man except the struc- 
ture and physical operations of his body, the modern 
university is but little in advance of the Athenian Ly- 
ceum. Its pneumatology and psychology, if it can by 
courtesy be said to have such sciences, are little else 
than speculation, and as to the conjoint action of soul 
and body, and the laws of their interrelation, the mod- 
ern college professor knows about as little as the Greek 
speculator; indeed there are many who know less, hav- 
ing been educated into doubt or denial of the existence 
of the soul. This absolute stagnation of psychic science 
and anthropology in the universities has necessarily 
carried with it a similar stagnation in the science of 
development or education, for development must be 
based upon, or guided by, the knowledge of the thing 
to be developed. 

A satisfactory knowledge of the psychic and physio- 
logical functions of life and their definite association 
with the brain and body and laws of interaction 
would necessarily indicate the laws of their develop- 
ment. That development is education, and the system 
of education which I present has its scientific basis in 
the anthropology which I have been teaching for forty 
years, and its empirical basis in the successful opera- 
tions of schools in which correct principles and meth- 
ods have been adopted. 

In presenting by this volume the convictions which 
I have cherished for nearly half a century, I find that 
I am no longer a solitary voice in the wilderness, and 
that the most liberal thinkers of the present genera- 
tion are prepared to hail with cordiality the principles 
of a " full-orbed education/' which, when I presented 
them at Minneapolis before the National Educational 
Association, were received with much approbation. 

During the preparation of this volume I have re- 
ceived so many indubitable evidences of appreciation, 
sympathy and co-operation as to induce me to propose 
the establishment of the Pantological University at 
Boston, as an embodiment of the new education, and 




INTRODUCTION. Vll 

to deliver an address upon the subject at Boston, June 
18, 1882. 

To this address* (a concise statement of the princi- 
ples of the new education) arid the purposes which it 
unfolds, attention has been called by a few of my 
friends in the following appeal to progressive minds. 
The great intelligence, learning and ability of those 
whose names are signed, and who have long been famil- 
iar with the most advanced forms of modern thought, 
are sufficient to arrest the attention of the most con- 
servative, or even the most pessimistic thinkers. 

To the Friends of Progress. 

In the eloquent and memorable address delivered by Prof. J. R. 
Buchanan, at Boston, on the " New Era in Education," we find a 
scheme of philanthropy more comprehensive, wide-reaching and 
efficient than any of which we have any knowledge. We ask you 
to read it carefully, that each one may answer for himself the ques- 
tion, What can I do to promote so grand a measure ? 

If the principles for which heroes, saints and martyrs have died, 
and will continue to toil and suffer, are to become established on 
earth, it must be by such means, for falsehood and wrong can never 
cease to prevail until they are expelled by what Prof. Buchanan 
calls the omnipotent power of education. That power and the 
mode of realizing it have been presented by him as they have never 
before been presented. He is the leader in this great reform, and 
it is fitting that he should be, since his life has been given disinter- 
estedly to reform, and his wonderful discoveries have organized 
with philosophic clearness the great science of man — the science of 
anthropology — from which philosophy will take a new departure, 
and the results of which in the words of the poet Bryant are, 
" Second to no other in immediate interest and in promise of im- 
portant future results to science and humanity. " No one individual 
in the whole history of vital and medical science has done so much 
to solve the mysteries of being and apply the solution to human 
welfare. 

Among the grand results arising are an entire change of our 
educational system and a fundamental change in medical philosophy 
and practice, the merit of which is already recognized by those who 
have attended his original courses of instruction. 



* I know of no better method of diffusing a knowledge of the 
proposed educational reform than the circulation of the Boston ad- 
dress, a pamphlet of twelve pages, which I shall furnish gratui- 
tously to all applicants, or in quantities at the rate of $2 per hun- 
dred. 



Vlll 



INTRODUCTION. 



In this great movement we shall co-operate as friends, and we 
do not see how any one who understands the subject and feels a 
sentiment of love for his fellow-beings can hesitate to co-operate by 
personal exertion, and by all the means that he can control, for 
works of benevolence and enlightenment. 



Nelson Cross, 
J. L. O'Sullivan, 
S. B. Brittan, 
Henry Kiddle, 
Allen Putnam, 
Wm. K. Hoyt, 
R. P. Wilson, 
L. L. Whitlock, 
E. L. Saxon, 



Wm. P. Strickland, D.D. 
J. M. Peebles, M.D. 
H. P. Gatchell, M.D. 
Wm. H. Atkinson, M.D. 
F. L. H. Willis, M.D. 
O. H. Wellington, M.D. 
M. B. Hayden, M.D. 
K. B. Martin, M.D. 
D. Higbie, M.D. 
Samuel T. Thompson, B. Franklin Clark, M.D. 
S. B. Nichols, and others. 



/ heartily approve the grand Educational Reform proposed by Dr. Bucha- 
nan, and shall be glad to co-operate in its furtherance in all ways in my power* 

A. E. NEWTON, Arlington, Mass. 



MORAL EDUCATION. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL 
EDUCATION* 



Ancient ignorance. — A glacial period of twenty centuries not yet 
ended. — Illiberal education. — Its signal defects. — Schooling 
not education. — The five indispensable elements of liberal 
education. — ist. Physiological development antagonized by 
schools. — 2d. Industrial education — its absence demoralizing 
and degenerating. — < 3d. Medical education — we have no 
right to be sick and should understand the preservation of 
health. — 4th. Life not worth living without moral develop- 
ment — virtue should be the first object of education. — 
5th. The literary or intellectual, the least important of the 
five. — Omnipotence of the school. — Results of liberal and 
illiberal education contrasted. — Illiberal education respon- 
sible for the world's misery. — Mill's ideal of education. — 
The moral the only elevating power. — Criticism of Italian 
universities. — Criticism of German universities. — Degrada- 
tion of education by the exclusion of its ethical elements. — 
Indifference to collegiate education. — Colleges not self-sus- 
tained. — A liberal education should be attractive and acces- 
sible to all. 

For about two thousand years the progress of sci- 
ence and philosophy was virtually arrested by a super- 
stitious reverence for Greek literature. The dense 
ignorance of the age of Plato and Aristotle was crys- 
tallized into forms of thought which, like a vast ice- 
berg, covered the civilized world, until in the time of 
Galileo it began to thaw in the divine light of science. 

* An address delivered in the University Convocation of the 
State of New York, at Albany, July 10th, 1878, with subsequent 
additions. 



2 ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 

It is commonly supposed that this glacial period of 
fully twenty centuries has passed away entirely — that 
the ice is all dissolved, and that the light of divine 
love and wisdom, falling upon the soil with unob- 
structed warmth, is bringing forth the dense and 
rapid growth that insures a magnificent harvest; or, 
in plainer language, that we are fully emancipated 
from the influence of ancient ignorance, and are pro- 
ceeding in the most direct and rational manner to 
cultivate and develop human intelligence, and to ap- 
ply that intelligence to the acquisition of all attainable 
knowledge. 

Disclaiming all intemperate radicalism and all need- 
less iconoclasm, I am nevertheless compelled by a 
conception of truth derived from new and peculiar 
investigations, and also verified by experience in edu- 
cation, to maintain the opposite opinion — to declare 
that the iceberg is not yet entirely melted, but still 
exists as a benumbing power ; for although Aristotle 
has been annihilated as authority by Galileo, Newton, 
tmd the physiologists, the barbarian conceptions of 
education and of philosophy which come down from 
the Aristotelian age are still dominant in various de- 
grees over the leading universities of the world — to 
so great an extent, indeed, that we shall not be able 
to boast of a true system of liberal education until 
the entire philosophy, ethics, teaching, and practice 
of our leading institutions of Europe and America 
shall be thoroughly revolutionized, their leading con- 
ceptions being not only fundamentally changed, but 
absolutely reversed. If you will pardon the audacity 
of this language, I will endeavor to show that it is not 
extravagant. There seems to be nothing in existence 
at present on a large scale in the leading institutions 
which can be properly called a liberal education, for 
that which makes the most imposing claims to be 
recognized as liberal education in the universities ap- 
pears, when viewed from the standpoint of anthro- 
pology, not only lame, feeble, and defective in the most 
essential elements of a liberal education, but positively 
illiberal in its contractile influence upon the intellect 



ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 3 

and soul, as well as its degenerative influence upon 
the body. 

The science of man demands a revolution in educa- 
tion, but the narrow limits of a paper before this con- 
vocation do not admit an exposition of this demand, 
or its basis — nor do they admit a distinct criticism of 
education as it is, nor a distinct exposition of educa- 
tion as it should be. The fullest development our time 
admits of the philosophy of education will be but of- 
fering the synoptic head-lines of a chapter that is not 
yet written. I desire that these remarks may be ac- 
cepted, not as a statement of the case, but as an index 
referring to the statement that may be made here- 
after. 

In presenting such a paper I place myself at your 
mercy, without a shield against misconception, and 
attribute to you the candor, patience, courtesy, liber- 
ality and intuitive recognition of truth when nakedly 
presented, which would become a body of philosophers. 
If we need philosophers anywhere especially, it is among 
those who organize and control our systems and insti- 
tutions of. education. 

The barbarian conception of education, which Bpian- 
kind have not yet outgrown, coming from a period 
when science was scorned, is, that education is the 
acquisition of a command of language and familiarity 
with literature, opinions and speculations. This is the 
fundamental conception, to which is added the knowl- 
edge of mathematics and of history. By the strenuous 
exertions of educational reformers something has been 
added to this in modern times. The physical sciences 
have asserted their claims. Ethics and sociology, in 
the form of political economy, are getting some recog- 
nition, and the spirit of progress is making so many 
additional improvements in different institutions that 
it is difficult to make any exact estimate of their pres- 
ent status. 

But all this is merely intellectual and chiefly literary. 
As an intellectual education it is defective, because it 
does not teach that originality of thought upon which 
the world } s progress depends. It fails to develop origi- 



4 ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 

nality and power of independent thought ; it fails to 
develop invention ; it fails to overcome dogmatism 
and prejudice; it fails to develop liberality of thought; 
it fails to develop the power of reasoning upon testi- 
mony and evidence in reference to new truths, and all 
things which are beyond the accustomed routine. 
The most educated men are often below the average of 
society, in the ability to discard prejudice and to ascer- 
tain the existence of any truth foreign to their train- 
ing. Such education does not qualify men to lead 
society into new truths, new arts, and a better social 
condition. It is not so hopelessly repressive as the 
Chinese system; but it is negative, adding little to 
the onward and upward movement of society; and the 
profound scholar is sometimes up to the Chinese stand- 
ard of immobility. It is notorious that hundreds of 
colleges, containing or controlling at least three- 
fourths of the learning, reputation and dignity of the 
medical profession, have not only closed their eyes 
against certain contemporary progress in medical sci- 
ence, refusing all examination of the scientific facts 
presented, but have assailed the new investigations 
witl^ far more of partisan bitterness and malignity 
thari was ever shown in darker ages by the partisans of 
Aristotle and of Des Cartes. Does not every one know 
that this is true of the organized hostility against the 
scientific investigations and discoveries of homoeop- 
athy and American eclecticism, which captivate every 
individual physician who dares to investigate them, 
but which have never yet received an honest and cour- 
teous investigation or even respectful treatment from 
the faculty of any old school college ? A system of 
education which produces such results is a survival of 
barbarism, and is at war with the spirit of the nine- 
teenth century. 

But if all these barbarisms were removed by a radi- 
cal change in our colleges, this would be but the be- 
ginning of reform. The whole system is wrong from 
top to bottom, for it is not educatio?i, but only schooling. 
Intellectual training, however perfect we may make it, is not 
a liberal education. It is not an education at all, but 



ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 5 

only a fragment of an education, as an arm is a por- 
tion of a man. 

It is not even the moiety of an education, for edu- 
cation consists of five distinct departments, which may 
be compared to the five fingers of the hand. In select- 
ing literary education or schooling as their sole pur- 
pose, the colleges have virtually chosen the little finger, 
leaving the four more useful and more powerful ones 
to blind chance, or perhaps to atrophy or paralysis. 
There has been many a learned collegian, in whom 
four-fifths of his nature was undeveloped. If col- 
legiate education had been truly intellectual education, 
in the full meaning of that expression, this criticism 
would still be applicable ; but, instead of intellectual 
development, it has been simply literary training, 
guided by a superstitious faith in the value of dead 
languages. Their value was correctly estimated by 
Prof. Huxley when he said : " A knowledge of Greek 
is no more an indispensable element of liberal educa- 
tion, in the highest sense of the word, than is a 
knowledge of Sanscrit, or of the differential calcu- 
lus, or of vertebrate morphology." The dead lan- 
guages have been obtruded upon those who did not 
need them, to the destruction of the knowledge which 
they did most deplorably need, and, in some cases, to 
the destruction of every purpose of a liberal educa- 
tion. The head master of Rugby, who is certainly a 
very competent witness, says : " For the most boys 
who do Greek at a public school it is not merely use- 
less, but pernicious. Greek is for them a lesson in 
slipshod. They never get the ideal, nor even the idea 
of doing their work perfectly. They give up the 
attempt at being sure of it ; and nothing can be more 
demoralizing to the intellect than this." 

The five indispensable elements of a liberal education 
are these : 

First, and most necessary, physiological develop- 
ment ; the formation of the manly, active, healthy 
constitution, competent to live a hundred years — com- 
petent to win success in life by unflagging energy — 
competent to enjoy life, and thus become a source of 



6 ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 

happiness to others, instead of a pauper or an invalid — 
competent to transmit life, health and joy to the thou- 
sands of future ages — competent to meet all the diffi- 
culties of life triumphantly, instead of struggling in 
misery and railing at society and at Divine Providence. 
Such are the men society needs, but if our colleges 
would look back two thousand years they would see 
how much better this education was conducted then. 
Instead of making men and women, the colleges have 
often impaired or destroyed them ; broken them down 
so often that it is even made an argument against 
education, and especially against the education of 
women, that education is dangerous to health. 

Thus the educational systems of two thousand years 
have at last culminated in this self-evident absurdity, 
that education is an injurious process; as if the very 
meaning of the word education had been forgotten. 
A grosser falsehood never has been current so long in 
civilized society. Education means development and 
growth of our powers and organs, and true education 
is necessarily healthful and pleasant. 

A male or female school which does not develop its 
pupils, which does not send them home in better 
health and development than when they were re- 
ceived, ought to be abolished as a mistake, if not a 
nuisance. Such schools would never have existed, 
but for the barbarous ideas of education maintained 
and propagated by the colleges, which train the little 
finger, while the other four are tied up in help- 
lessness. 

This physical destruction is utterly inexcusable, 
even when physical training is impossible, for intel- 
lectual education is not injurious to physical healthy but 
beneficial, and it were easy to prove this if I had time. 
But a false system of intellectual training, which wor- 
ries and fatigues the mind and injures the brain, does 
impair the health, because it is not education, but 
drudgery, worry, tyranny, and exhaustion, which are 
the reverse of education. True intellectual education 
is animating, joyous, and healthful ; but such an edu- 
cation is like angels' visits to the school-room. The 



ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 7 

angels prefer to visit the Kindergarten and the Indus- 
trial Palace of M. Godin, in France. And I doubt not 
they often visit Northampton, Vassar, and the other 
nurseries of young angels. 

2. The second element of a liberal education is 
training for the business and duties of life — in other 
words, Industrial Education, without some share 
of which it were better for a man that he had never 
been born ; for without industrial capacity (unless a 
hereditary capitalist) he must be either a beggar, a 
thief, or a swindler. It is one of the greatest crimes 
of society that in withholding industrial education 
from woman it has forced upon her these alternatives, 
with the addition of legal and illegal prostitution. 
When we all confess our sins in this matter some of 
us can plead to the recording angel that our medical 
colleges have always been open to women, teaching 
them not to be noisy babblers, but to be ministering 
angels in the chamber of suffering. 

Our colleges generally have educated American citi- 
zens as if they were the sons of wealthy noblemen, 
who needed only intellectual accomplishments. Si- 
lently, but effectively, they have taught them to look 
with contempt on manual labor as something degrad- 
ing ; to speak with contempt of money and the arts 
by which it is honestly acquired ; to aspire to profes- 
sional life and office-holding, and to glory in the 
military exploits of the crowned felons who have rav- 
aged the homes of civilization with wholesale homicide 
and arson. It is no palliation that these things are 
not ostensibly and expressly taught, for the silent 
teaching is often the most effective. 

College education is thus largely demoralizing. 
The world is full of wrecks and failures from ineffi- 
ciency, for which colleges are often responsible, and 
has been continually ravaged by wars in which the 
college-taught have been the leaders and instigators, 
instead of being conservative and moral influences to 
teach mankind their brotherhood. When the college 
knows nothing of universal brotherhood, and the 
church on which it leans also knows nothing of uni- 



8 ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 

versal brotherhood, having its chaplains, its deacons, 
bishops, and members righting against each other in 
every war, what can we expect but the satanic reign 
of national crime, desolation, and misery, perpetuated 
by the national debt that crushes out the life of labor. 
We need true churches and true colleges, whose walls 
are not stained with human blood, by whose influence 
swords and cannons shall be turned into ploughshares 
and anvils. 

In neglecting physiological education we have de- 
generated the human race, impaired its efficiency, and 
saddled on its back a costly medical profession — ten 
times as many physicians as should be needed, who 
struggle to prolong lives that are hardly worth pre- 
serving — that perpetuate physical and moral degen- 
eracy. 

In neglecting industrial education we have pro- 
duced a race of soft-handed, soft-muscled men, who 
struggle to escape man's first duty, useful produc- 
tion, and to live at others' expense by the innumer- 
able methods of financial stratagem. The reign of 
fraud will never cease until each man is taught that 
life presents this sharp alternative — useful production 
or the life of a vampire. He who has attained man- 
hood without being trained to useful production, may 
justly utter maledictions against parents and schools 
for having blasted his life and deprived him of the 
only solid foundation of honor and prosperity. 

Industrial education, giving the mastery of produc- 
tive arts, is the second necessity as the development 
of the body is the first. The college says, if you con- 
descend to acquire an industrial education, there is time 
enough after your literary education is completed, and 
therefore it excludes industrial education and builds 
the man without certain necessary elements of manli- 
ness, as the habits of twelve years of literary effemina- 
cy must cling through life. Would it be rational to 
confine a baby to the cradle for ten years, on the pre- 
text that it must first acquire language perfectly be- 
fore it learns to walk ? The infant would be impaired 
for life, as men are impaired by any system which 



ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 9 

for many years separates practical from literary cul- 
ture. 

Under this antiquated system intellect is trained to 
adorn with effeminacy and pedantry selfish ambitions, 
while the workshops and the farms are surrendered to 
ignorance and blind routine. Invention lags behind 
necessity; the lands are worn out; the wheat-field that 
ought to produce thirty bushels per acre produces 
ten, and the work that one man ought to do in eight 
hours occupies three men twelve hours. At the close 
of day they come to cheerless homes where their wives 
are equally exhausted by toil. Thus the laborer is 
brutalized by ignorant toil, and classes are separated 
by broad, dividing lines of caste that limit fraternity 
and are premonitory of social convulsions, the end of 
which none can foresee. 

When industrial education shall have become uni- 
versal, we shall not only have a more honest and manly 
and fraternal race, but our fields will be more than 
doubled in their production, and our arts advanced 
from twofold to tenfold in their product; and in the 
abundance thus produced poverty and pauperism will 
be submerged, as the Desert of Sahara will be gone 
when the ocean flood is let in upon it. 

Does any one doubt the practicability of this ? I 
would say that it is an easy matter to make every 
young man and woman proficient in more than five prof - 
itable occupations, not only without detriment, but with 
positive benefit to their literary education. The prog- 
ress of industrial education in Europe will ere long 
furnish a triumphant demonstration of this; and in this 
country the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
(under President Runkle) and several other institu- 
tions are making rapid progress in the demonstra- 
tion. 

3. The third element of a liberal education, next in 
importance to the physical and industrial, is the Medi- 
cal. It has become a familiar thought that anatomy, 
physiology, and hygiene are necessary elements of a 
liberal education; but it demands much more. 

The first duty of a man is to sustain himself — that 



10 ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 

he be not a burden to others. This corresponds to 
industrial education. The second duty is akin to the 
first two elements of education. It is to sustain him- 
self in full vigor of mind, soul and body, that he may 
perform every duty, and be a help instead of a burden 
to those around him. Without this second duty per- 
formed, physiological development and industrial cul- 
ture are both failures; and without either of these three 
indispensable qualifications the man himself may be a total 
failure. Therefore these three are the first elements 
of a liberal education. With physiological develop- 
ment and industrial qualifications, the Medical Edu- 
cation which I ask for all men and women will enable 
them to live without failure in the performance of 
every duty and the diffusion of a beneficent influ- 
ence. 

It is said that Col. Ingersoll recommended as an im- 
provement on the plans of Divine Providence that 
health should be contagious instead of disease. I have 
demonstrated, and am daily demonstrating to my 
pupils and patients, that health is contagious. The 
man who maintains high health is a fountain of health 
to all around him. 

I am speaking really of a moral duty. No man has 
a right to be drunk, and no man has a right to be sick. 
He gets sick, if not by poverty or exposure, either 
through profligacy or ignorance, and he has no right 
to be either profligate or, ignorant, even if the college 
trains him up in ignorance of himself. 

My demand for a medical education for all sounds 
extravagant when it is first heard: it brings up a ter- 
rific array of surgery, obstetrics, and death-bed con- 
sultations; but I mean nothing of that sort. I mean 
an education by which disease shall be stamped out 
in its incipience. I mean that disease should be treated 
as a mad dog, who is entirely harmless if you do not 
allow him to insert his teeth in your flesh. ^When 
you are trained to high health you should resolve to 
live on that high plane, inaccessible to disease. Its 
first approaches are easily repelled. The great ma- 
jority of diseases can be repelled without the use of 



ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. II 

drugs. Allow me, I pray, to speak ex cathedra as a 
medical professor, referring to what I am teaching to 
students and proving by experiments. Call at my 
office in New York, and I will prove what at present I 
only hint at, for want of time. I will show you what 
I mean — how thoroughly men and women maybe pro- 
tected from disease by methods almost unknown in 
the schools, and enabled to break up attacks of dis- 
ease as soon as they are aware of its presence. 

By such a medical education as I propose nine- 
tenths of all the disease that ravages society would be 
annihilated, and nine-tenths of the physicians and the 
medical schools granted a furlough for life. 

One-half the time that is usually expended on the 
Latin language would be sufficient for such a medical 
education as I propose for every man and every wo- 
man — but more especially for every woman, to whom 
it is far more necessary and valuable than rhetoric, 
grammar, arithmetic, geography, history, languages, 
and music. 

4. With physical, industrial, and medical education, 
man is just prepared to live. But that his life shall be 
worth living, shall be a blessing to himself and the 
world, we need the fourth element of a liberal educa- 
tion, which is to make him a good and happy man — 
the moral, or ethical, or religious education. Either 
of these words, rightly understood, conveys the full 
idea, for each should mean the same; although con- 
tracted and perverted by vulgar usage, each word has 
but half its proper meaning. I mean the education 
which shall exalt man to the plane of a happy, a holy, 
and a glorious life, in harmony with the Divine nature 
— a life so high that it shall be in communion with the 
angels — a life so beneficent that it shall diffuse happi- 
ness around to all and leave a blessed fragrance be- 
hind in all the atmosphere that it filled. 

Is this an idle dream of possibilities ? I say it is 
not, for heaven has many saints who have led such a 
life, and almost every one can recognize, if not within 
his reach at present, at least somewhere on the horizon 
of his life, some one who was born to bless by loving 



12 ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 

ways and deeds, and whose memory as we look up to 
heaven is a blessing like the falling dew. 

Colleges are supposed to be devoted to intelligence, 
but I affirm that they should be devoted first to virtue, 
and that it is as practicable to take the plasmic ele- 
ments of youth, and thereof make a good man, as it is 
to make an intelligent or wise one. Intellectual without 
moral education simply increases the dangerous and 
corrupting elements of society. It gives the sceptre 
of knowledge into the hands of the social Lucifers. 

Moral education I demand, but the word has an im- 
poverished meaning — perhaps ethical is better, and 
religious is better still. But these words are so im- 
poverished and enfeebled by the moral malaria of 
society that I would willingly drop them all, to say 
that I mean the education of the soul — the education that 
shall make it truly the temple of the living God* 

What I mean by moral education — what are the new 
processes to be adopted, what glorious results it has real- 
ized, where it has to any extent been adopted, in con- 
verting young criminals into good citizens, and how 
thoroughly this disposes of all questions concerning 
college government and prison discipline ; still more, 
how powerfully this moral education reenforces intel- 
lectual education, giving it a zeal, a fertility and a 
power before unknown, time forbids me to say; and I 
can only refer to my published lecture on Moral Educa- 
tion and to the doctrine of " Full-Orbed Education/' 
the principles of which were received with great favor 
at the meeting of the National Educational Associa- 
tion in Minneapolis. 

5. These are the four elements of a liberal education^ 
in the order of their necessity — the Physical, the In- 
dustrial, the Medical, and the Moral — all more neces- 
sary than the fifth, the literary or the intellectual, which, 

*It is pleasant to find such principles partially recognized in 
theory, even when universally disregarded in practice, as when 
President Noah Porter of Yale said at a recent college convention, 
" There was one thing which Yale had received from the fathers, 
and which they always insisted on, and that was that manhood and 
character were better than knowledge" 



ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATLON. 1 3 

as it has been conducted heretofore, I regard as the 
little finger of the educational hand. I would change it, 
however, by developing the power of original thought 
and invention, until this feeble little finger shall be- 
come the index finger, to point the way to a new social 
condition of intelligence, prosperity and happiness, in 
which the wisdom of the Divine plan of humanity 
shall be illustrated by the heavenly life on earth. 

If I am asked how colleges which now give but one 
of the necessary elements of a liberal education shall 
perform the miracle of giving the whole five in the 
same limited time, I reply that it requires no more time 
to exercise five fingers simultaneously than to exercise 
one. The five elements of a liberal education natur- 
ally intermingle and unite like inter-diffused gases that 
aid each other's elasticity. The co-education of all our 
powers is natural, easy and pleasant, while the repres- 
sive system so long in vogue involves fatigue, disgust, 
tyranny, disorder, demoralization and a positive aver- 
sion if not to study at least to true intellectual progress. 

Every organ of brain and body, every faculty of the 
soul brought into operation grows and develops, 
aided by the others, and at the same time adds to the 
sum total of vital and spiritual power that sustains 
and impels the whole. 

I believe, therefore, and it is not merely a scientific 
opinion, but is practically sustained by a large amount 
of evidence which time does not allow me to present, 
that the true liberal education requires no more 
time than the old fractioital syste?n, and that the first 
eighteen years of life are amply sufficient for a liberal 
education — the co-education of soul and body, the co- 
education of man and woman, the co-education of the 
material and spiritual worlds, which shall harmonize 
humanity with itself, man with nature, and earth with 
heaven. 

We need a vast elevation in the ideal of liberal edu- 
cation and the conception of the power and duty of 
schools. The school is omnipotent because it takes 
hold of humanity in its pliable condition when it is at 
our mercy in its feebleness. The oak is immovable, but 



14 ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 

when it first appears from the acorn an infant may de- 
cide its destiny — its life or death, form and limits of 
development. In the infants of to-day we control the 
possibilities of all coming generations for glory or de- 
spair, life or extinction. 

A perfect liberal education should extinguish the 
elements of hereditary disease, and fortify against 
their possible development. The illiberal education 
of to-day leaves hereditary disease untouched and 
adds new elements of debility and death in aching 
heads, enfeebled eyes, impaired spinal and muscular 
conditions, nervous, hysteric, anemic and consumptive 
tendencies, enfeebled digestion, sentimental indolence 
and aversion to labor, the consequences of which are 
seen in all civilized nations, in diminishing vital ener- 
gy, increasing mortality, unfitness for military service, 
inability to bear heroic medical treatment (compelling 
a change in practice), increase of insanity and idiocy, 
increase of illegitimacy, abortion, pauperism and crime. 

A perfect liberal education would prepare every in- 
dividual for his life pursuit, as thoroughly at least as 
the lawyer is prepared for practice. It would double 
the general productiveness of labor, and thus extinguish 
poverty while developing a vast amount of mechanical 
genius by cultivating originality and invention as well 
as mechanical skill, and thus accelerate the develop- 
ment of inventions and discoveries that give us the 
command of nature's boundless resources. The in- 
crease of wealth thus arising would in a few genera- 
tions by its own increasing power give us the ability 
to achieve all that philanthropy and science demand. 
With abundant and cheap capital thus at command, 
even the homeless orphan would find in his skilled la- 
bor the road to wealth. 

Our illiberal system of education, confining its train- 
ing for life to the literary professions, degrades labor, 
drives ambitious men into non-manual vocations, and 
leaves the industrial classes, or a large portion of them, 
ignorant and degraded, unable to better their condi- 
tion, crushing each other in blind competition for em- 
ployment, helpless to employ themselves, dependent 



ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 1 5 

on capital and corporations, struggling for a meagre 
subsistence, living half the length of days enjoyed by 
the prosperous, and with their short lives beclouded 
by disease and the grief of premature deaths in their 
families, while the whole struggle of life lowers their 
jnoral nature, tempts to crime, and invites to suicide — 
in which they find uniting with them many of the su- 
perficially prosperous but ill-trained, to whom life yields 
no substantial joy. Of such material is society com- 
posed, which continually threatens by social convul- 
sions to fall into anarchy — a disorder that is kept at 
bay only by the policeman's club and the soldier's 
bayonet. There is no possible remedy for this but 
industrial education, to restore prosperity, and moral 
education, to restore peace and good-will. 

Liberal education would give to woman health, en- 
ergy, and independence, enabling her to live in com- 
fort until attracted by a true love to the conjugal 
home; and in that home,while contributing to its finan- 
cial prosperity, she would be able to bring forth worthy 
children and to send them forth to life's battle phys- 
ically and morally sound and capable of advancing be- 
yond their parents. 

Illiberal education has either left the female mind 
undeveloped or given it a more flimsy and poorer ed- 
ucation than the male. It has kept her isolated from 
society, feeble and timid, romantic, delicate, hysteri- 
cal, credulous, and ready to be a victim of masculine 
deceit, to marry blindly or to marry for a subsistence 
which she cannot earn for herself, and thus pass into a 
*ife of conscious subjection, enduring passively the 
^vils into which she has been plunged. Ignorant of 
^er chief maternal duties, of hygiene, physiology, and 
reproduction, she languishes in feeble health and trans- 
mits her infirmities to her children, whom she has been 
taught to rear as ignorantly as she was reared herself. 

Liberal education makes the school-room a delight- 
ful place, to which the children resort with eagerness, 
in which their songs maintain a spirit of harmony, 
obedience and love, and the voice of threatening is 
never heard; in which they grow into habits of polite- 






1 6 ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 

ness, friendliness, hospitality, obedience, diligence, zeal, 
energy, manliness, self-respect, truthfulness, and cheer- 
fulness, which enable them to set examples that im- 
prove their seniors, and to begin life with a stock of 
religious virtue sufficient to defy temptation. 

Illiberal education has carried its subjects into an 
unreal realm of thought, or perhaps into the mists of 
metaphysics; has surrounded them with the mummies 
of antiquity and made them more familiar with the 
charnel-house of nations than with the living condition 
of humanity; it has taught them the glory of the use- 
less and the baseness of the useful; it has taught them 
that literature is worth more than the discharge of 
duty in sustaining ourselves and our families; that the 
immense mass of practical science which exists in the 
workshops and sustains nations is hardly worthy of a 
thought; that the condition of the mass of humanity 
is not a matter of serious inquiry, except it be in the 
cold calculations of political economy as a matter of 
national wealth and power, but that the exploits of 
crowned and epauletted felons who have ravaged the 
world in devilish brigandage are the chief matters of 
admiration in history and imitation in our own career. 
It has taught them to look to physical science and 
physical demonstration in all things, to the utter dis- 
regard of faith in human testimony and the recogni- 
tion of our own intuitions; and if perchance it has 
taught anything of Christianity it is merely as a 
matter of remote history and blind faith, because it is 
authoritative and not demonstrable by the true scien- 
tific standard, but never as a living truth, with spirit- 
ual evidences above all science. And lest its unnatural 
teachings should lose their hold on the pupil it has 
taught him by precept and still more by example to 
ignore the other side and its arguments on every dis- 
puted question, and hold fast to authority on pain of 
incurring the sentence of proscription or intellectual 
Boycotting, which dogmatic authority wields as its 
sceptre. As for the ethical elements of present and 
eternal life, illiberal education has left its subjects as 
it found them ; or perhaps has left them to dislike au- 



ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 1 7 

thority, to avoid books of useful instruction, to con- 
sider idle sport the supremest pleasure and labor the 
greatest degradation, to be moved chiefly by rivalry 
and jealousy, to scoff at profound moral truths, to as- 
sail or ignore whatever does not accord with their 
prejudices or with a low animal view of life, to trifle 
with all solemn thoughts, to ignore the welfare of oth- 
ers, to look to money, power, and ostentation as the 
goal of life, and to pursue that aim without regard to 
the laws of health, without regard to any high princi- 
ple (perhaps without regard even to law), and to ignore 
the laws of our eternal destiny until the cold hand of 
hovering death shuts out all scenes of earthly ambition 
and rouses a debased soul to the consciousness that it 
is plunging into the darkness of eternity. 

In short, illiberal education is responsible for the 
vast increase of debasement, of crime, suicide, insanity, 
pauperism, and mortality which statistics alarmingly 
prove to have occurred in the present century, during 
which, while religion and morals have declined, in- 
temperance has much more than doubled in that 
English-speaking race which is destined to be the 
leading power of the world. 

The chief hindrance to the adoption of a just con- 
ception of liberal education has been the false concep- 
tion imparted from a state of society at war with 
American Democracy. That false conception is in 
deadly hostility to the American system. The liberal 
education of monarchies and oligarchies is that which 
suits hereditary rulers and priests and which is void 
of the most essential moral principles — recognizing 
no obligation to industry, no obligation to economy, 
no obligation to peace either in personal or national 
affairs, no obligation to temperance, no fraternity 
among men, no duty of intellectual progression, but a 
continual preference of the past over the present and 
future, of ostentation over utility, of pedantic research 
over useful knowledge, of learning over genius, of 
rank over merit, and of military glory over all the be- 
nevolent achievements of peace. 

The ideal system of liberal education in its highest 



1 8 ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 

sphere was well expressed by J. S. Mill, but to quote 
his language seems like satirizing our existing systems. 

" There is an education of which it cannot be pretended that the 
public are competent judges — the education by which great minds 
are formed. To rear up minds with aspirations and faculties above 
the herd, capable of leading on their countrymen to greater achieve- 
ments in virtue, intelligence, and social well-being; to do this and 
likewise so to educate the leisured classes of the community gener- 
ally that they may participate as far as possible in the qualities of 
these superior spirits and be prepared to appreciate them and follow 
their steps. These are purposes requiring institutions of education 
placed above dependence on the immediate pleasure of that very 
7nnltitude whom they are designed to elevate. These are the ends for 
which endowed universities are desirable; they are those which 
endowed universities profess to aim at, and greater is their disgrace 
if, having undertaken this task, and claiming credit for fulfilling it, 
they leave it unfulfilled" 

Noble as is the conception of Mr. Mill, how thor- 
oughly Utopian is it as applied to universities which 
have always been the strongholds of conservatism, 
identified with all old bigotries, and intimately asso- 
ciated with dominant classes who need elevation of 
sentiment as much as the lower orders. No mere in- 
tellectual ambition can originate or sustain the ideal 
university of Mr. Mill. It is essentially a new institu- 
tion, as different from the old universities as American 
democracy from the Czarism of Russia. The univer- 
sity that is to elevate humanity must have in itself 
the elevating poiver, and the only elevating power under 
the sun is the moral power — the power that elevates 
men's lives and aims, the power of Divine love, to 
establish which Jesus died; the power that banishes 
gloom, indolence, selfishness, discord, and stolid prej- 
udice, and unites all in the harmonious pursuit of 
truth, of science, of wisdom, and the application thereof 
to the improvement of society. This power illumi- 
nates and clarifies the intellect, making it open to a 
flood of new truth, and brings man every hour nearer 
to the Divine wisdom, as it led the inspired of old 
into that high sphere of thought in which the future 
is revealed. 

There is more of this elevating and ennobling power 



ELEMENTS OE A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 1 9 

in the ministrations of some sincere followers of Christ, 
themselves pervaded by his spirit, and leading others 
on to lives of consecration, than in all the universities 
of the world, for they are unable to elevate men to 
any higher level -than their own, which is simply the 
monotonous life of respectability in established 
opinion, comfortable salaries, contented ease, and pro- 
found indifference to the essential rights of man, the 
condition of the laboring multitudes, the fate of toil- 
ing inventors and discoverers, and the battle of new 
truths with hoary errors. 

It is possible that old institutions may be gradually 
pervaded by the* spirit of progress and philanthropy, 
but I have far more faith in the value of new institu- 
tions founded on the love of God and man, devoted 
to useful knowledge, to profoundest views of life and 
nature, and to preparation for the duties of life, which 
will make the pupils truly the leaders and elevators of 
society. • 

But what such universities should be, and could be, 
I may discuss more fully hereafter for the benefit of 
those whose clear intuitions receive the inculcations 
of this volume. I prefer in this volume to indi- 
cate the principles of progress and nature of educa- 
tional reform rather than to provoke skepticism by 
sketching the ideal university which should be the an- 
tithesis of the conservative university, which was well 
described by Professor Angelo de Gubernatis, of Flor- 
ence, as he has observed that institution in Italy, as 
follows: 

" Under the present system the university is too widely estranged 
from our every-day life, and too indifferent to it. Where vital 
force should be most felt it is wholly lacking. Students enter the 
Universities and issue therefrom in much the same manner as did 
the prophet Jonah enter and come forth from the gloomy recesses 
of the whale. They go there to learn the mysteries of science, but 
of the science of life, by far the most important of all, they come 
away ignorant. One student studies four years, another five, 
another six; but they are all equally ignorant of the art of living. 
The university should properly be the mother of genius and of char- 
acter; it is instead merely the censor for a certain number of years 
of a crowd of boys, who are forced to cheat at the examinations in 



JO ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 

order to rise from grade to grade till the desired doctor's vote is 
obtained. Then they are all obliged to feed together like sheep in a 
pasture; the examinations are the same for all. given at stated in- 
tervals and in a like manner for all; votes are east with the same 
judgment, or rather lack of judgment, since the best parrot of the 
class c.xn pass the most brilliant examination, and consequently 
gain the vote, while the greatest genius may perhaps lose the con- 
test, disheartened by the trying formalities of the proceedings. It 
is never taken into account that one student might perhaps merit 
the title of doctor after only a month of trial, while another might 
fail to deserve it even at the expiration of twenty years. Should 
there be a few intellects more active than those around them, this 
discipline speedily brings them to the common level." "At present 
there is almost no intercourse between the university and the world 
without, and while from within it appears to be a great institution, 
outside its walls its influence is unfelt." 

It can be only partially true that the influence of 
the university is unfelt outside oi its walls. It may 
have no direct immediate influence, but it has a great 
influence in ultimately moulding public opinion. The 
public opinion that tolerates war and glories in mili- 
tary rank as the highest aim of life is generated in 
universities by the Study of military history and prac- 
tice of military ethics, which are exactly the antipodes 
of true Christian ethics. Until within the last five 
years duelling was the leading feature of university 
life in Germany. "At one time (says the London 
Standard) these student-duels were really as formid- 
able as the name might. imply. The chief aim of the 
combatants was to maim each other, and to cut off 
art ear or the etui of a nose was accounted a feat 
worthy of all honor. At first this method of settling- 
differences was resorted to only in cases oi extreme 
difficulty, but latterly on any pretence, or none at all. 
a challenge was sent, until, as the fatality of the duels 
reased, their number multiplied so prodigiously 
that duelling in some of the universities^ such as those 
Leipzig, Berlin, Jena, and Gottingen, became a pupil 
mania and a public nuisance. In Gottingen as many 
as thirty have been fought in one day, and sotm 
these, even within the memory of tl ration, were 

There was hardly an attempt at concealment. 
The hotel-keeper brought out a cask of beer; half of 



ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 21 

the steubel-shod students attended to drink it, and 
critically watched the fun. If — rare chance — a stu- 
dent was killed his opponent received from the uni- 
versity a consilium abeundi, or hint to quit. He accord- 
ingly " went down." But his relegatio, or expulsion, 
did not prevent him entering another university. If 
he were unfortunate enough to kill his man a second 
time the way to further academic distinction was 
barred." 

We have nothing like this in America, but it is a 
part of the cosmopolitan influence which forms the 
literature and public sentiment of the world. From 
students thus educated have come the cold skepticism, 
the lame speculation, and the terribly gloomy pes- 
simism of German literature. The duelling student 
grows up as the materialistic scientist, the vaguely 
skeptical philosophizer, the iron-handed ruler of his 
country, and the soldier, ready to welcome any war 
that is deemed politic. 

In America we have schools especially pervaded 
with the military idea, dressing their students in mili- 
tary uniforms, calling them cadets, and training them 
in military drill, as if soldiering were to be their pro- 
fession, while all our schools are pervaded by the 
spirit of the histories of wars, and their pupils are fasci- 
nated by the sounds of martial music and the display 
of military parades, while the processes of useful in- 
dustry occur to their imaginations only as repulsive 
drudgery, far beneath the dignity of literary occupa- 
tions. 

The entire degradation and perversion of education 
has been caused by the exclusion of ethical influence and 
principles, and will cease when the ethical element shall 
be introduced. 

Uninspired by love, primary education has been sim- 
ply a tyrannical enforcement of tasks, generating, like 
all tyranny, sullen discontent, secret hate, furtive eva- 
sion or restless disobedience, and steadily maintain- 
ing a low moral status. With proper ethical senti- 
ments the teacher who has all the world's wealth of 
intellectual delight and information at command 



22 ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 

would be the most fascinating companion to whom 
his pupils could approach, and the school would be 
their favorite resort, exclusion from which would be 
keenly felt as a punishment. 

Uninspired by love, the higher education has been* 
a selection of themes and tasks without regard to the 
welfare of the pupil, and without any thought of qual- 
ifying him to reach a higher stage in civilization, or 
to get rid of the errors inherited from ancestry or in- 
stilled by teachers. 

The welfare of the pupil depended upon an enlight- 
ened understanding of the pursuits in which his life 
was to be passed, but no preparation for life-pursuits 
was given, except to the lawyer, the priest, and the 
physician. To abolish the special schools of law, 
medicine, and theology, and leave the students to 
gather their knowledge by apprenticeship or by chance 
medley would be considered at this time a social out- 
rage; but the entire mass of society outside of those 
professions has been subjected to such an outrage time 
out of mind, and all classes, including the professional, 
have been subjected to a wrong of equally injurious 
nature, in being totally unprepared * for any honorable 
and useful career when their college course is finished, 
and also deprived of knowledge of the science of life 
and of hygienic training for healthy development, hence 
doomed to suffer by unprevented disease and prema- 
ture death. 

It is no wonder that such an educational system, with 
its cold indifference to the happiness of its subjects, is 
not esteemed by them; that the boy has trudged un- 
willingly to school, rejoicing whenever he could escape, 
and the older youth have manifested a chronic dispo- 
sition to disorder and rebellion when not controlled 
by efficient authority — in short, the whole educational 

* The New York Sun says of the college graduate: " He has spent 
four years, not in learning the specific things he requires at the 
end, but in getting a smattering knowledge about languages, 
mathematics, philosophy, and science, which is of little practical 
benefit to him." 



ELEMENTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 23 

system has been maintained by outside force instead 
of internal vitality. 

Unable to demonstrate a satisfactory value in their 
education, the young men and their parents have been 
unwilling to pay the price of what was to many rather 
more a costly bauble than a necessary or useful arti- 
cle, and our colleges would have been feebly main- 
tained or starved out of existence had they not been 
sustained by charitable donations or endowments. 
Schools which qualify men for their pursuits are sus- 
tained by the voluntary payments of those they in- 
struct. Medical, legal, business, and technical schools 
are sustained by their fees, but literary colleges, with 
all the influences of fashion, example, and public 
opinion in their favor, cannot sustain themselves, be- 
cause they do not give an equivalent for the time and 
money they consume. Hence their tuition fees do 
not pay half their expenses. The entire tuition fees 
of American colleges in 1878 amounted to much less 
than half their total income, which was $4,613,137, of 
which the tuition fees were $1,929,060. 

The students who resort to medical schools, and 
whose payments sustain the colleges, are certainly not 
more affluent than those who resort to the literary 
colleges, which are kept alive by endowments to en- 
able them to maintain an effete system. 

When that system shall be abandoned, and all 
schools shall give their pupils precisely what they 
need, qualifying them for a successful life, and plac- 
ing them on a higher plane of capability, efficiency, 
and personal worth than that of the average citizen, 
or the average graduate of the old style college, their 
halls will be filled by multitudes, and they will not 
need to be beggars for philanthropic generosity. 

That such unendowed schools may be established 
by energetic teachers and with some aid from loans at 
their beginning may grow into flourishing universi- 
ties I do not doubt. By the proper combination of 
technical instruction and industrial occupation such 
universities would be enabled to bring a truly liberal 
education within the reach of every earnest, industri- 



El r Mi- 



ll. El 



ous young m. mi or woman who is not burdened i>v 
the necessity ol sustaining at the same time the de- 
pendent membei s oi i heii families* 

Thus t<> make education accessible t<> .ill, and to 
make it .» full development <>i the moral nature which 
makes life worth living, <>i the physiological strength 
and hygienic knowledge which make a complete life 

possible, oi the practical knowledge and skill which 
make life successful, and oi the observing, thinking, 
Investigating, and originating mind which guides to 
universal Improvement— this is indeed a liberal educa* 

lion. 



CHAPTER II. 

MORAL EDUCATION.* 

Its true meaning, its power, and its universal neglect. — Its par- 
amount importance. — Necessity ol og the i 
th<: ss of M. Wichern 
at the • : hods. — ? 

U, and Birmingham. — Success of Mr. H 
and the Str- 
aits. — Burnham Wad well in the Vir- 
tual, m 

public senti- 
ment amor.g the youth for good or evil. — Sup*;' the 
pupils at L< ent and diligence. — Wonderful 
sir en. 
— Indians at Hai cardina 
moral education, a new suggestion. — T: intellect 
ear 
ov. 

implicit} — Testirr 

The ear the channel of moral education, 
the larynx the instrument. — The example of the k ';n. 

— . -iety, vis: fa al instruction, vocal music, 

activity, the .igious influence. 

Moral education as commonly understood is not a 

brilliant or interesting theme. The phrase has 

and meaning i: . it out, but words do 

not pass current by their normal meaning. All v. 

and phrases are liable to degenerate in use. Villain 

and miscrear finally and normally terms of 

able meaning, but they degenerated until 

/jumlrt. i normally a 

j of loft] rt, implying the highest sphere of 

kno >ut it has I that to-day it 

implies mere empty and worthless speculation. 

moral n, which normally means the ele- 

:' man to the loftiest condition that he is capa- 

* Ai /hers' association at L 

Ville, Ky., in I 



26 MORAL EDUCATION. 

ble of occupying, signifies in most men's minds merely 
repressing the extravagant vices and animality of 
youth, and giving them a respectable knowledge of 
the moral code. But this is not moral education any 
more than a police court is a temple of religion. It is 
merely a piece of necessary self-defence against ani- 
mality. The science of moral education is not yet sys- 
tematically developed, and the art of moral education 
has yet to be organized and put in practice in our 
public schools. It is a very remarkable fact that now, 
near the end of the nineteenth century, there is no rec- 
ognized system of moral education, and no science in* 
vogue developing its true principles. I do not mean 
that there has been no moral teaching, no moral in- 
fluence in schools, or no moral results, but simply 
that there has been no scientific system, no adequate 
comprehension of the moral power, nothing but the 
instinctive movements of common sense without a 
scientific plan. 

The idea that the moral nature is just as educable as 
the intellectual nature, and that it is just as practica- 
ble to make a good man as a wise and enlightened 
one, is not yet entertained or acted on in literary insti- 
tutions. The idea is, practically speaking, so new that 
it may even be necessary to prove that I am not vision- 
ary or Utopian in presenting it, and claiming for edu- 
cation more than its friends have ever yet demanded, 
more than any college, excepting perhaps Fellen- 
berg's, has ever yet demonstrated to be possible, and 
more than any philosopher has shown by reason to be 
within the bounds of probability. 

The value, the power, and the practicability of 
moral education have not been known, because all 
men have given their attention to intellectual educa- 
tion, fully believing in intellectual development by 
educational institutions, which w T ould give their pupils 
intellectual superiority; but not believing, not even 
hoping that such institutions would raise their pupils 
into moral superiority over the rest of mankind. But 
that is what I do believe and claim for moral educa- 
tion. If that claim be just, it is one that should arrest 



MORAL EDUCATION. 27 



• 



the attention of the whole civilized world, for it is the 
most cheering and hopeful statement that has ever 
fallen on the ears of the philanthropist, while it is the 
most revolutionary suggestion that has ever been ad- 
dressed to the practical teacher. 

You will agree with me that it is not a debatable 
question whether a man's moral or intellectual life is 
of the greatest value, for happiness is as high above 
intelligence as the heavens above the earth; nor is it at 
all debatable whether it were better for our country 
to be filled with shrewd and intelligent scoundrels or 
\yith good but ignorant men. Ignorance is a trivial | 
matter in comparison to crime, and intellectual shrewd- 
ness is no compensation for the loss of virtue and 
happiness. I claim therefore that moral education in 
its highest sense is incomparably more important than 
intellectual education; and as our educational systems 
have heretofore been not moral but intellectual, they 
are but left-handed affairs, and have yet to acquire 
their strong right arm. It is almost impossible to 
make education purely intellectual; but if we could 
educate men forever on the intellectual plan, and if 
there could be no moral element in the education, 
they would be no better, no happier in the end; there 
would be as much of fraud and strife, murder and 
misery, as much of poverty, despair and suicide, as 
w r hen we began. Two of the most intellectual, bril- 
liant, and educated men I have ever known termi- 
nated their lives by their own hands, because all their 
intelligence brought no happiness; their lives were 
hollow mockeries; and just such a despairing mockery 
is that splendid civilization in which literature, art, 
science, machinery, and architecture make an outward 
display, while the whiskey-shop, the street mob, the 
workhouse, the penitentiary, the police court, the 
foundling hospital, and the insane asylum tell the inside 
story of its misery. Amid the brilliant civilization of 
Paris there are to-day many thousand criminals. 

We have had too much of the intellectual without 
the moral education ; and although the world is far 
better now than in the days of the Roman Empire it 



28 MORAL EDUCATIOX. 

• 
is still crammed with misery and crime. The laborers 
oi Europe, living on from one to three dollars a week, 
are kept in squalid ignorance, and their bread is taken 
by taxes to teed four million men who live only for 
the purpose of homicide by bullet and bayonet. The 
great nations of Europe devote their wealth to Stand- 
ing armies and the debts of war; and while they pro- 
fess to represent the highest civilization oi Christen- 
dom, which professes allegiance to the law of love, 
they live as brigands do, with their swords pointed at 
each other's throats, every one oi them believing that 
if they could not defend themselves, their so-called 
Christian neighbors wotdd invade, conquer, rob and 
enslave them. Each nation thus declares that it con- 
siders its neighbors an organized banditti, and this uni- 
versal opinion must have some foundation. Gloomy as 
it seems, this is the universal condition which " is now, 
ever has been, and ever shall be," unless moral educa- 
tion can change the scene. That noble apostle of edu- 
cation, my friend Horace Mann (who is now among 
the saints), said in a lecture often delivered : 

"The world is to be redeemed. In six thousand years, with 
exceptions 'few and far between,' the earth has been a dwelling- 
place of woe. There has not been an hour since it was peopled 
when war has not raged like a conflagration on sonic part of the 
surface. In the haughtiness of despotism on the one hand, and the 
debasement of vassalage on the other, the idea of human brother- 
hood has been lost. The policy of the wisest nations has been no 
higher than to punish the crimes they permitted, instead of reward- 
ing the virtues they had cherished. Throughout the earth until 
lately, and now in more than three of its live grand divisions, the 
soldier and the priest have divided and devoured it. The mass of 
the human race has sojourned with animals, that is, in the region 
of the animal appetites; and though the moral realms have been 
discovered, yet how feebly have they been colonized. But it is 
impiety to suppose that this night of darkness and cloud will always 
envelop the earth. A brighter day is dawning, and education is 
its day-star. The honor of ushering in this day is reserved for 
those who train up children in the way they should go. Through 
this divinely-appointed instrumentality more than by all other 
agencies the night of ignorance and superstition is to be dispelled, 
swords beat into ploughshares, captives ransomed, and rivers of 
plenty made to run where the rivers of intemperance now How. 
At this sight 'angels look on and hold their breath, burning to 
mingle in the conflict. '" 



MOA'AL EDUCATION. 29 

If teachers are to be the chief instruments for the 
redemption of mankind, they must rise to the dignity 
of their apostolic office ; and the very first requisite is 
that the honors and rewards, the salary and the social 
position of teachers should be equal to those of any 
other profession, and that young men and women of 
the best abilities and social position should be induced 
to resort to the normal school as they now resort to 
colleges of law, medicine, and divinity, and should 
consider the diploma of a qualified teacher, earned by 
four years' special study, the most honorable parch- 
ment that any university can give, at once a passport 
to profitable occupation and to social respectability, 
because it would be (from a proper normal university) 
an evidence of tie character of a thorough gentleman 
of more diversified culture than we find in any other 
profession — competent to instruct most physicians in 
physiology and hygiene, most clergymen in philos- 
ophy, and most attorneys in political economy and 
history. Hut to secure such men we must offer salaries 
of from fifteen hundred to three thousand dollars. 
Germans flourish on smaller salaries* because they 
have a better social position; but Americans are so ac- 
customed to measuring men by money standards that 
he who would hold up his head well in society must 
have a good salary, f 

* The salaries of good teachers in Germany are better than our 
own average — 1000 to 2000 thalers, which they often receive, being 
worth more there than the same number of dollars in this country. 
The average pay of New York teachers — §375 — forbids the eleva- 
tion of the profession. 

f A proposal in the Boston School Board to reduce the salaries 
of the school-teachers of that city gave the Rev. George A. Thayer 
a chance to free his mind on the subject in a minority report. He 
had obtained estimates, he said, from careful and trustworthy per- 
sons of the incomes enjoyed by successful members of the learned 
professions in Boston. Fifty lawyers make $10,000 a year and up- 
ward; one hundred make from $5000 to $10,000; one hundred or 
more make from $3000 to $5000. Eleven doctors are believed to 
make $20,000 a year, forty from $10,000 to $20,000, eighty from 
$5 00c ) to $10,000, and two hundred from $3000 to $5000. In 
three leading Protestant sects, twenty-one ministers receive sala- 
ries ranging from $4000 to $10,000. For his part, the Rev. Mr. 



30 MORAL EDUCATION, 

The Germans accomplish this purpose by giving 
teachers a better social position, and we may profit by 
their example. The report of George Nicholls to the 
poor-law commissioners of England says : 

" In Holland there is no profession that ranks higher than that 
of a school-master, and a nobleman would scarcely, if at all, com- 
mand more respect than is paid to many of those who devote their 
lives to the instruction of youth. The same personal consideration 
is extended to the assistant teacher or usher. We were much 
struck with the difference in the position of persons of this class, 
abroad from their lot at home when we were visiting a school for 
the middle classes at Hesse Cassel. The first thing which drew 
our attention was the extreme ceremony with which we were intro- 
duced to each of the assistant masters, and the many apologies 
made by the professor for interrupting them, although but for a 
moment, in their important labors." 

Mr. Kay says : 

"Throughout Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Sax- 
ony, and France great pains are taken to make the teacher's rank 
in society and his situation worthy of the acceptance of an educated 
man; his salary . . . is fixed and certain. When a teacher has 
become too old or too weak to perform all his accustomed duties 
in the school-room, the inspector of the district decides whether 
he shall be dimissed with a pension * or whether the committee 
shall engage an assistant teacher to aid him in the school-room. 
The widows and children of deceased teachers are pensioned off 
in Saxony in the same manner as in Prussia. Another most im- 
portant regulation is that no person or persons in immediate per- 
sonal connection with a teacher shall have the power of dismissing 
him." 

How different is the condition in America. " As a 
rule (said the N. Y. Tribune), teachers, however ac- 
complished, outside of our higher institutions don't 
receive the social recognition that by virtue of their 

Thayer thought that Boston should seek for the teachers of its 
children large-minded persons, whose abilities would have earned 
them distinguished success in any of these other professions or in 
trade. But it could not get such teachers unless it was prepared 
to assure them honorable comfort and an old age free from care 
about money. — N. Y. Sun. 

* Pensions in Prussia increase according to the length of service: 
after fifteen or twenty years it is equal to one-fourth of the salary; 
after thirty to thirty-five years the half; after fifty years three- 
fourths, and proportionally for intermediate terms. 



MORAL EDUCATION. 3 1 

important work at least they deserve. It is outrage- 
ous that a profession which in its noble and impera- 
tive work touches the mark with theology and medi- 
cine r should give its cleverest members little more 
than the poor necessities of life. It is the absolute 
truth that the salaries paid to public school-teachers 
are as small as in any sort of human decency can be 

given Without, much leisure to use the means 

of intellectual expansion, and without money to pur- 
chase them, he becomes a teacher by rote; his poverty 
first and then his will consents to a routine, without 
freshness and inspiration." 

While thus stinting and degrading its teachers the 
State of New York squanders twelve or fifteen millions 
on a superfluous capitol building at Albany. It is not 
therefore poverty that forbids the proper payment of 
teachers ; nor would such payment be burdensome 
with a proper arrangement of schools. A competent 
oral teacher instructing classes of from fifty to a hun- 
dred and sometimes two hundred would be less ex- 
pensive than the tired-out and necessarily tyrannical 
pedagogue who dominates over thirty dissatisfied 
pupils arranged in ten or fifteen classes and drilled in 
uninteresting text books. 

All educational reforms must fail unless we have 
good teachers : but with a superior corps of well-paid 
teachers, who consecrate themselves for life to their 
business and have all the necessary appliances, I claim 
that we can accomplish the moral regeneration of 
mankind by means that have been already tried and 
worked successfully. 

I do not mean by the ordinary appliances, for they 
are notorious failures. We have in common use four 
methods of moral education : i. Homilies by text- 
book and lecture ; 2. Good advice ; 3. Scolding ; 4. 
Punishment. These methods are in use everywhere, 
and everywhere failures. The bad boy hears the 
virtues talked about in homilies until he is tired of it. 
He gets good advice when he is doing right, and a 
double dose of good advice when he is doing wrong. 
But it is very rare to find anybody who would thank 



32 MORAL EDUCATION. 

you for good advice, or who is willing to act on it. 
The man who really knows how to appreciate good 
advice and to act on it is already so good that he sel- 
dom needs it. If he desires it, he does not need it ; 
and if he needs it very badly, he does not desire it, but 
heartily resents it. The bad boy rejects advice with 
contempt, and receives a liberal supply of scolding, 
which makes him sullen and so wicked that for his 
next offence he is whipped and left under the debasing 
influences of hatred and fear. 

Moral education is the reverse of this. It takes 
in criminals, and turns them out good citizens by the 
familiar means that common sense recommends — by 
placing them in a moral atmosphere, and keeping 
them in it till their whole nature is changed, just as 
men are made criminals by placing them in a criminal 
atmosphere, and keeping them there till they are 
saturated with baseness. The same amount of moral 
power which can take criminal youth and elevate them 
to respectability, can take the youth of virtuous fami- 
lies and elevate them to pre-eminence in virtue. It is, 
therefore, no exaggeration to say that the schools 
which have reformed criminals have demonstrated an 
amount of power sufficient for the world's regenera- 
tion, if rightly applied. 

One of the most conspicuous examples ever known 
of the power of moral education in redeeming and 
elevating criminals w T as at the Rauhen Haus, near 
Hamburg, of which we have the following account 
from Rev. Calvin E. Stowe : 

" Hamburg is the largest commercial city of Germany, and its 
population is extremely crowded. Though it is highly distinguished 
for its benevolent institutions, and for the hospitality and integ- 
rity of its citizens, yet the very circumstances in which it is placed 
produce among the lowest class of its population habits of degra- 
dation and beastliness of which we have but few examples on this 
side of the Atlantic. 

"The children, therefore, received into this institution are often 
of the very worst and most hopeless character. Not only are their 
minds most thoroughly depraved, but their very senses and bodily 
organizations seem to partake in the viciousness and degradation 
of their hearts. Their appetites are so perverted that sometimes 
the most loathsome and disgusting substances are preferred to 



MORAL EDUCATION. 33 

wholesome food. The superintendent, Mr. Wichern, states that 
though plentifully supplied with provisions, yet, when first received, 
some of them will steal and eat rancid grease that has been laid 
aside for the purpose of greasing shoes, and even catch May-bugs 
and devour them ; and it is with the utmost difficulty that these 
disgusting habits are broken up. 

"An ordinary man might suppose that the task of restoring such 
poor creatures to decency and good morals was entirely hopeless. 
Not so with Mr. Wichern. He took hold with the firm hope that 
the moral power of the Word of God is competent even to such a 
task. His means were prayer, the Bible, singing, affectionate con- 
versation, severe punishment when unavoidable, and constant, 
steady employment in useful labor." 

The place was a prison when he took it. He threw 
down the high walls and took away the bars and bolts. 
He made the children love him, and he converted 
them into estimable characters. Horace Mann says : 

11 The effect attested the almost omnipotent power of generosity 
and affection. Children from seven or eight to fifteen or sixteen 
years of age, in many of whom early and loathsome vices had 
nearly obliterated the stamp of humanity, were transformed not only 
into useful members of society, but into characters that endeared 
themselves to all within the sphere of their acquaintance. The 
children were told at the beginning that labor was the price of liv- 
ing, and that they must earn their own bread. . . . Charity had 
supplied the home to which they were invited — their own industry 
must do the rest. 

"Music is used as one of the most efficient instruments for soften- 
ing stubborn wills and calling forth tender feelings, and its de- 
privation is one of the punishments for delinquency. The songs 
and hymns have been specially adapted to the circumstances and 
wants of the community, and it has often happened that the singing 
of an appropriate hymn . . . has awakened the first-born sacred 
feeling in obdurate and brutified hearts. Sometimes a voice would 
drop from the choir, and then weeping and sobbing would be heard 
instead. The children would say they could not sing, they must 
think of their past lives, of their brothers and sisters, or of their 
parents living in vice and misery at home. On several occasions 
the singing exercises had to be given up. Frequently the children 
were sent to the garden to recover themselves."* 

* " Those who have had the most experience in converting the 
Mongolian have discovered that the power of song is a more potent 
lever to pry under the edge of heathen unbelief than the influence 
of prayer. As seon as a Celestial can be taught to sing Sabbath- 
school hymns he is gone, so far as his old faith is concerned." — 
Salt Lake Tribune. 



34 MORAL EDUCATION. 

One of the worst children was so much affected by 
the music that Mr. Mann says he could never hear 
certain Christmas hymns without being affected to 
tears. At the great Hamburg fire they acted like 
heroes, but refused all compensation, and after the 
fire gave up their provisions and their beds to the 
sufferers. When Mr. Mann asked* Mr. Wichern how 
he accomplished such wonders, he simply replied that 
it was "by active occupation, 7nusic, and Christian 
love." 

Industrial occupation, songs, and love are certainly 
the three chief powers in moral education. It was these 
three influences which have civilized and elevated the 
unreclaimed race in America ; and for the want of 
these the reclaimed Indian tribes have perished. We 
cannot expect to find very often such a moral genius 
as Mr. Wichern, but many well-administered institu- 
tions are successful in reforming criminals. The 
wildest savages have been reclaimed at the Hampton 
Institute, and the Modoc Indians, who were so hard 
to conquer in the lava-beds, are now good citizens. 
Scarfaced Charley is a respectable farmer. 

At the reformatory farm-school of Mettray, in 
France, founded by Judge Demitz for children who 
were condemned in court for their crimes, a similar 
system was pursued, and the number of children 
thoroughly reformed was about eighty-five per cent 
of all. 

The reformatory farm-school at Red Hill, in Surrey 
County, England, takes charge of youths who are con- 
victed of crime, or who are the children of felons. 
They are so successful that they impose no restraint 
or confinement, and their schools are as orderly and 
well-behaved as the schools patronized by the better 
classes. The reformatory schools of England, though 
inferior to those on the continent, do reform over two- 
thirds of the children in their charge. 

Mr. Hill, recorder of Birmingham, said at the con- 
ference on reformatory schools at Birmingham : "I 
know it is the belief of many that to aim at reforming 
thieves is to attempt impossibilities. A shrewd gen- 



MORAL EDUCATION-, 35 

tleman said he would walk a hundred miles to see a 
reformed thief. I think I could cure him of skepti- 
cism. " He said that at the asylum at Stratton-on- 
Dunsmore, although they had not the means of con- 
fining the criminals, they reformed forty-eight per 
cent at first, and when their arrangements were im- 
proved they reformed sixty-five per cent, and these 
reforms were effected in about two years, at a cost of 
about ^31 a-piece, while the average cost of uni- 
formed culprits was, for legal expenses, ^145. 

If our legislators could look at this matter as an 
affair of dollars and cents alone, they might discover 
that for one-fourth of our present expenditure and 
losses by criminals the race of criminals might be so 
reduced that jails and penitentiaries would be almost 
empty. 

We have at this time in the State of Ohio a reforma- 
tory institution, the State Reform School, near Lan- 
caster, under the management of Mr. G. W. Howe, 
which is a wonderful example of what moral power 
can accomplish. My first knowledge of this institu- 
tion was obtained by meeting Mr. Howe at the Prison 
Reform Congress, in St. Louis, in May, 1874. He told 
a graphic story of his labors in attempting to detain 
and educate young convicts on an open farm sur- 
rounded by the forest, offering every facility for 
escape. His heart sunk in momentary despair and 
alarm when on a dark night the boys, having just 
come from the chapel, started off with a sudden im- 
pulse into the woods, and left him alone to meditate 
on disappointments. It was not long, however, after 
their voices had been lost before he heard them again 
emerging from the forest, with the cry, " We've got 
him ! We've got him ! " A rough young convict, re- 
cently arrived, thought the dark night offered a fine 
opportunity for escape, and started off at full speed. 
His comrades pursued to capture him, and brought 
him back. Such w T as the general sentiment of the 
school that the boys would not favor or tolerate run- 
ning away. 

In this institution none are received but youths con- 



3^ MORAL EDUCATION. 

victed of crime. The report of the board of commis- 
sioners for 1868 says: 

" Of those admitted this year, thirty are under twelve years of 
age, and ninety are from eleven to sixteen. These juvenile of- 
fenders are, most of them, charged with grievous crimes and mis- 
demeanors. A boy of eleven is sent for arson; another of twelve 
for burglary and grand larceny; and another of fourteen for rob- 
bing the United States mail. Many of our boys have been the 
slaves of the vilest habits and violent passions, of low and debas- 
ing propensities. Among our inmates may be found every shade 
of character, and every grade of intellect. The unconquered will, 
the ungoverned passion, the depraved appetite, with confirmed 
evil habits, suggest the difficulties and the discouragements in re- 
gard to their reformation." 

Since the establishment of this reform school, in 
1858, about two thousand of these criminal youths 
have been received* and all but a very small percent- 
age have been restored to virtue, having earned an 
honorable discharge by good deportment for a suffi- 
cient length of time to satisfy their teachers that they 
were really reformed. 

The reform school occupies nearly twelve hundred 
acres of elevated, hilly, healthy, but not productive 
land, six miles south of Lancaster, with buildings ca- 
pable of accommodating about five hundred boys — a 
main building one hnndred and sixty-one feet long, 
eight family-buildings, four large shop-buildings, a 
large chapel, besides barns and other out-buildings. 

In this healthy and pleasant home they are received 
and managed with unwearied kindness and love, and 
carried through a course of moral instruction perhaps 
the most complete and efficient that has ever been 
successfully applied on so large a scale. If there is 
in our country any better system of intellectual, moral, 
and practical education happily combined, I am not 
aware of it. I refer not to its details, but to its per- 
fect threefold combination. 

So perfect is the system that, although they receive 
so many young criminals from jails, they have no jail, 
no prison-walls, no bolted gates, but occupy an open 
farm in the forest, where the boys are as free as in any 



MORAL EDUCATION. 37 

country academy; and are often sent to the village 
or the mill on errands, without any guards; and yet 
there are fewer escapes than from other institutions 
where boys are kept strictly as prisoners within high 
walls and bolted doors. 

A similar report, mentioning only two escapes, comes 
from the Board of Control of the Michigan State Re- 
form School, in which the moral system of government 
is adopted, who say in a recent report: "All bars and 
bolts, cells and whips, have been abandoned. No un- 
sightly fence shuts away the beautiful world without, 
and the love of home keeps our boys within its shelt- 
ering arms. The boys are generally contented, and 
realize to a great degree the fact that the Reform 
School supplies for them a real need, and furnishes 
for most of them a better home than they had been 
accustomed to before their admittance here." 

The report of 1868 says: " When we consider that 
the great majority of our boys have been guilty of 
crime — some of them utterly reckless and desperate — 
it is remarkable that they can enjoy such freedom and 
not abuse it They not only yield quietly and sub- 
missively to all the requirements of the school them- 
selves, but exert an influence to have all their com- 
rades do the same." 

It is an encouraging fact too, as stated in the report 
of 1870, that instead of finding reformation more diffi- 
cult with the older boys, they have been rather more 
successful in establishing their moral principles; for, 
having more strength of character, they take a firmer 
hold of good principles. In this fact I think we have 
great encouragement to believe that many of the still 
older criminals who are confined in State penitentia- 
ries will prove good subjects for moral reform when 
they receive benefit of a similar institution. 

Indeed, I think this was fully proved by the experi- 
ence of Burnham Wardwell, superintendent of the 
Virginia State Prison, a man whom nature designed 
for the management and reformation of criminals. I 
think we owe a much deeper debt of gratitude to 
moral heroes in an humble sphere than to many whom 



38 MORAL EDUCATION. 

the world honors. Fellenberg at Hofwyl, Mr. Wichern 
at Hamburg, Mr. Howe and his associates at Lancas- 
ter, and Burnham Wardwell in the Virginia prison 
are the men we should love and honor. Mr. Wardwell 
is not an educated man, but he has the genius of re- 
formatory love. He treated the prisoners as brothers, 
and instead of governing by handcuffs and bayonets 
he dismissed his guards, and brought the six hundred 
and fifty prisoners unchained and unguarded into the 
chapel to hear the fervid appeals of a truly Christian 
minister. He so elevated their sense of honor that he 
could trust them anywhere, and often sent them out 
of prison with no escort but his little son. He tells an 
amusing story of a party whom he allowed to leave 
the prison and make a donation-visit to their chaplain. 
One of his fiercest prisoners carried a long, sharp knife 
for his donation, and when asked about it on the re- 
turn of the party he said he would have cut the throats 
of any who would have attempted to run off! 

The great merit of the Reform School of Ohio is 
that the education is symmetrical and complete — it is 
intellectual, practical, and moral. They give half their 
time to instruction, the other half to work; and through- 
out the whole they are under moral influences. In- 
dustry — the daily performance of duty in work — is the 
very foundation of moral culture, without which the 
moral nature has little stamina, and may degenerate 
into mere sentimentalism. It is the resolute doing of 
duty every hour in the day which makes the substan- 
tial moral character that will stand the conflicts of 
life; and as labor is the chief duty of life, it follows 
that no moral education is entirely substantial which 
does not include labor. This is the secret of the won- 
derful success of the reform school. Another open 
secret which some of my. reverend friends failed to 
see is that in a school of three hundred youths, disci- 
plined to duty and friendship by love, labor, and song, 
there is a public sentiment, an irresistible moral 
power, which at once controls and assimilates the new 
arrivals as dead flesh is assimilated into the human 
body. 



MORAL EDUCATION. 39 

Mr. Howe was asked somewhat incredulously about 
his marvellous success, because it was greater than his 
questioner had been accustomed to observe in families 
and schools. But these families and schools have not 
the enormous power of moral leverage which belongs 
to an institution with a large and well-trained band of 
pupils, isolated from surrounding society, forming 
their own public opinion under the control of their 
teachers, and swaying absolutely every individual. 

The power of this organized sentiment was graph- 
ically described by Pres. Porter, of Yale, in his essay 
on " The Common Life of the College." He observes, 
" It is a true and pregnant saying, * You send your 
child to the school-master, but 'tis the schoolboys who 
educate him.' The studies, the systems, and methods 
of teaching, the knowledge and skill of the instructors 
do not constitute the whole of the educating influences 
of the college. Often they do not furnish half of those 
influences which are most efficient, which are longest 
remembered, or which are most highly valued." 
"Very many, even of those college graduates who 
have turned to the best account all the resources 
which their alma mater could furnish, feel themselves 
quite at much indebted to the educating influences of 
its community for the awakening and direction of 
their energies as to their studies or their instructors." 
"The intellectual stimulus and education which are 
furnished by the college community are of a kind 
which neither circumstances nor instructors can im- 
part." 

In common college life all this moral and intellec- 
tual power runs riot in its own spontaneous strength, 
developing vices as well as virtues, so that Pres. Porter 
observes, " The moral powers often become paralyzed 
in some of their functions, and incapable either of 
right judgments or active feelings on certain classes 
of ethical questions." " That not a few are misled by 
its special temptations, not merely nor chiefly to vices 
and prodigalities of a grosser sort, but to a refined and 
subtle insensibility to good that is more insidious and not 
less really evil, will be confessed by many." 



40 MORAL EDUCATION 

In the training at Lancaster all this moral power is 
firmly seized, controlled, and organized for good, and 
when it is universally realized that every collegiate 
institution may and should thus wield a power which 
is greater than any power they wield at present, soci- 
ety will look to college for its moral leaders and ben- 
efactors. 

At Lancaster the boys of the school do all the work 
on the farm, raising their own food and a large 
amount for sale. Every hour is occupied in work, 
study, moral instruction, or recreation, leaving no 
room for any evil influence to creep in. They are 
divided into seven families, occupying different build- 
ings, each family under charge of a teacher, who is 
called the elder brother of the family, who, with his 
wife or matron, attends to the personal comfort and 
moral management of his family, which numbers 
about fifty boys. 

In the report of '68 we find sub-reports from the 
elder brothers of the Huron Family, Muskingum 
Family, Miami Family, Erie Family, and Maumee 
Family. In these families the convict-boy is received 
with parental kindness and soon learns to love his 
teachers. One of them, Mr. Darling, says (1868): 

"What the teacher of such boys needs is true Christian love, 
sympathy, and patience. Properly armed with these weapons, he 
may boldly attack the heart-citadel of the worst boy who may come 
under the law with sure confidence of success. There is no power 
on earth so strong as love; and the most depraved boy has a soft 
spot somewhere in his heart, through which he may be touched 
and reclaimed, if we but perseveringly approach him in this spirit, 
having patience with his shortcomings and sympathy with his 
weakness. I am learning to feel that if a boy stubbornly and per- 
sistently resists the ordinary efforts made for his reformation, not 
that he is hopelessly fallen away, but the fault rather lies with 
myself, that through my ignorance I am not able to discover the 
specific remedy for his peculiar form of disease." 

It is this power of kindness which enables them to 
say: 

"We have no massive walls around our family buildings and 
play-grounds, and employ no police-force to guard the boys, yet 
very few ever escape; our boys seldom prove so unfaithful to their 



MORAL EDUCATION. 4 1 

trust as to attempt to leave the school in an improper manner. 
When they do so they not unfrequently repent of their foliy and 
return voluntarily. 

' " As an evidence that our boys are properly controlled, and that 
they love and honor their home, words of profanity and vulgarity 
are never heard from their lips; quarrels are unknown; not a seat 
in the school-room, not a wall is defaced by cutting or marking, or 
soiled by words or pictures of impurity. They are loved and 
trusted, therefore they are contented, and, like good boys, stay at 
home and do their duty. Nor are they held by personal restraint 
and a system of espionage. Chords of love and confidence are our 
chains. The force that holds any well-regulated family together is 
the cohesive and blessed power prevailing in this family of three 
hundred and thirty-four boys and thirty officers and employees. 
For eleven years we have sent almost daily one to six boys with 
teams to Lancaster, a distance of six miles. Not one of these boys 
ever betrayed our confidence by escaping, and we never heard a 
single complaint of bad conduct. Indeed the citizens of Lancaster 
and the surrounding country have always and uniformly com- 
mended their good behavior and gentlemanly bearing. We trust 
our boys, and they reciprocate our confidence. A few weeks ago 
the Reform-school Base-ball Club played on the farm a match-game 
with a club made up of the most respectable young men of Lan- 
caster, and were the winners. After the game the clubs partook 
of a repast kindly provided by our excellent and faithful matron, 
Mrs. Howe. Last week the Lancaster club kindly invited our boys 
to a game in town." (Report of 1S69.) 

The farm club was then entertained at a supper in 
town by the High-school Club. The report of 1870 
says: 

M No private dwelling in the state presents less of the rudeness 
and vandalism that with knife and pencil defaces and defiles its 
walls and furniture than ours. The same is * true of our school- 
rooms; not a seat or a desk is the least injured. The wanton waste 
or destruction of property is nowhere to be seen. In the observ- 
ance of the Sabbath we have evidence of the success of our insti- 
tution. In no home or village in the state are the sacred hours of 
the day of rest, of worship, and improvement more appropriately 
and profitably spent. The Sunday-school is always attractive and 
interesting." 

In addition to school-study, religious teaching, and 
rmatic industry they have every evening a moral 
training, of which they say: 

" It is the great moral nucleus of our institution; here we are en- 
abled to reward, reprimand, and punish our boys, and at the same 
time gain their affections and hold the keys to their hearts. Each 



42 MORAL EDUCATION. 

boy is conversed with and interrogated as to his thoughts and con- 
duct during the day, and specially urged to record in his diary some- 
thing learned or some good act actually performed. The promises 
made here are generally considered sacred. 

44 A visitor remarked in an account of his visit to the farm, * We 
were not less surprised than pleased to see the frankness, honesty, 
and true nobleness that the boys exhibited in the moral training, 
and we hope never to forget some cases of great interest, and 
lessons we learned of human nature, struggling with their noble 
acquirements.' 

44 After the moral examination has been finished sufficient time 
is given to read books, write letters, or attend to other exercises. 
The elder brother frequently selects some article or chapter pertain- 
ing to the kinds of labor that the class have been employed at, and 
reads it aloud, explains it, and answers questions that may be 
asked. The boys are also permitted to read aloud pieces of their 
own selection; and in this manner the evening is passed away very 
profitably and pleasantly. At nine o'clock, the hour for retiring, 
an elder brother leads in family worship. When they retire each 
boy is earnestly requested to consecrate a few moments to self-re- 
flection and examination, and all are reminded of their duty to pray 
to God in sincerity. By proper reflection and the instruction he 
receives the youth is enabled to see his errors and make good reso- 
lutions for the ensuing day. 

44 Nothing but a truly philanthropic zeal manifested in all inter- 
course with the governed, and exemplified in every attempt to cor- 
rect the errors and win the hearts of the obstinate, will insure proper 
success. 

44 The departure of those who have been honorably discharged has 
always been an affecting scene. They are escorted a short distance 
by the school, and all bid an affectionate farewell, during which 
time there are but few who do not shed tears." (Report of 1858.) 

Corporal punishment is not used. When punishment 
is necessary, solitary confinement or bread-and-water 
diet or demerit marks are used; while merit marks are 
given for all good conduct, which have a pecuniary 
value; and badges are used which mark the moral 
standing and promotion to a higher class — the high- 
est class indicating that they are fully reformed and 
prepared for an honorable discharge. 

The intellectual education in this school has been 
very successful, and I believe that the industrial and 
moral training is the cause of its success. The report 
of 1871 says: 

11 Every boy, according to his age and strength, works one half 
of his time. In our shops — black-smithing, carpentering, chair- 



MORAL EDUCATION. 43 

seating, broom-making, tailoring, and shoemaking— at the saw mill, 
on the farm, in the orchards, vineyards, nurseries, and strawberry- 
plantations — all of our boys find congenial and useful employment. 
Our school will compare favorably with the best common-schools 
in the state. We have no truants; the attendance of each scholar 
is regular and punctual. The school-room seats and furniture 
show no defacement; though used for years, they show no marks 
of being soiled or marked." 

Mr. Darling says (report of 1868): "Generally they 
are hungry and thirsty for instruction, for proper 
guidance and encouragement." The chaplain's re- 
port of 1869 says: " The boys are of a positive nature. 
When they listen, they listen with intense interest; 
when the sing, if not in the spirit, they do sing with 
power." Mr. Darling says: 

11 In vocal music, too, of which I have charge, the boys have at- 
tained wonderful proficiency. All the boys can sing some, and we 
have a large number of sweet, powerful voices. When all the voices 
unite in some pleasing chorus the singing will do credit to any 
church or choir in the state. The rapidity and accuracy with which 
they learn a new piece, words and tune, are truly astonishing." 

The boys also have a Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation, a literary and debating society, a weekly 
prayer-meeting, and the institution supplies a library 
and reading-room. 

The boys who leave the institution often write back 
friendly letters, showing their respectable conduct and 
their gratitude for being saved by the school. Many of 
these letters have been published, and they justify the 
assertions of the report of 1873: "We receive bad 
boys and see them greatly benefited, idle boys and see 
them become industrious, vicious and revengeful boys 
and see them become mild and teachable, profane and 
obscene-speaking boys soon to find that no evil com- 
munications proceed out of their mouths." 

I do not believe that this wonderful power of moral 
education and regeneration can be fully realized with- 
out labor to consolidate the character; but for those 
who have not yet fallen into vice there may be a moral 
education that will be sufficient to elevate the charac- 
ter, and of this we had ample proof in the school of 



44 MORAL EDUCATION. 

Fellenberg at Hofwyl, the most celebrated school in 
Europe — a school which attracted the attention of 
every nation; commissioners and ambassadors from 
different governments made examinations of its work- 
ing. Russia, Prussia, France, and Switzerland had 
official reports upon it. The famous Robert Dale 
Owen was a pupil of that school more than fifty years 
ago, and in his autobiography, published in the Atlan- 
tic Monthly, he gives a very interesting account of it, 
which is fully sustained by its general reputation and 
official reports. In that school there was a medley of 
nations. Germans, Russians, French, English, Dutch, 
Greeks, Swiss, Prussians, Italians, and others, whom 
we might have expected would be engaged in constant 
broils. But it was a school of moral government, in 
which the students governed themselves so well that 
Fellenberg had no need to display his authority. The 
sentiment of honor and fidelity to their own regulations 
was made the governing power. They were governed 
by the moral public opinion of the school. As Mr. Owen 
says, "the nobler sentiments were appealed to, and the 
response was prompt and ardent." They did not en- 
gage in duels, which prevail in all German universities; 
they had no personal encounters or fisticuff fighting; 
and what is stranger still, they had no smoking, frolick- 
ing, or drinking.* Tobacco was banished by the action 

* What a contrast is this to the general character of German uni- 
versities. At Gottingen last May, fifty-eight of the students were 
found guilty and fined, and two ringleaders sentenced to a year's 
imprisonment for participating in riots that lasted a week, caused 
by the burgomaster closing all beer houses and other places of 
public entertainment at midnight, a restriction so resented by the 
students that "it is said the university will be partially deserted if 
the measure is not relaxed." 

What a signal contrast, too, to the general character of American 
schools and colleges in the present century, long after the example 
of Hofwyl had been published. Quarrels and fights, rowdyism, 
riots and rebellions" have been recurring every year and every 
month. Ex-President Woolsey of Yale recently said that when he 
came to that college in 1851, "the students were more disorderly 
than they had ever been before or since. Among the college officers 
this time was commonly spoken of as a reign of terror. Thirteen 
hundred panes of glass were broken in a brief period, and there 



MORAL EDUCATION. 45 

of the students. If they ever went to a neighboring tavern 
it was at a proper time, in a gentlemanly way, and 
with the knowledge of their professors. Moral power 
and public opinion proved sufficient without reward 
or punishment. There was no competition for honors, 
nor medals, nor exhibitions, nor expulsions. 

" All this," says Mr. Owen, " sounds, I dare say, 
strangely Utopian and extravagant. It comes before 
me now, by the light of a life's teaching, and by com- 
parison with the realities of after years, more like a 
dream of fancy seen under the glamour of optimism 
than anything sober, actual, and really to be met with 
in this prosaic world. It avails nothing to tell me that 
such things cannot be, for at Hofwyl they were. I 
described a state of society which I saw, and part of 
which I was." 

In that school the scions of European aristocracy 
and the humblest Charity scholars associated together, 
and no one would know the difference. 

Fellenberg's career is now a matter of history; and 
as history repeats itself, often with improvements, we 
find that what he demonstrated with children of the 
respectable classes, Mr. Howe and his worthy asso- 
ciates in Ohio have demonstrated with the graduates 
of the police court and jail. These examples prove 
that moral education guided by common sense, even 
with no scientific and philosophic comprehension of 
the subject, is competent to lift the vicious into moral- 
ity and to elevate the moral to a loftier life. 

Still more do I claim for moral education philoso- 
phically understood and practised. I do believe it is 
competent to remove all the evils of society, and put 
an end forever to pauperism and crime, as well as to 
war and political corruption. Its omnipotence over 
all classes and races has been well exhibited in the ex- 
perience of the Hampton Institute of Hampton, Vir- 
ginia, at which seventeen young men, Indian pris- 

were other disturbances which caused the faculty to try thirty or 
forty of the students in a b©dy on the green." His experiences dur- 
ing this turbulent time in college did much to strengthen his char- 
acter. 



46 MORAL EDUCATION. 

oners of war, were left in 1878, for whose education* 
the residents of St. Augustine had paid. "They repre- 
sented the worst stock in the Indian Territory — the 
class that the West declares cannot be educated any 
more than the buffalo, believing ' there is no good 
Indian save a dead one.' Yet in a few months eleven 
of the students, against each of whom there were 
charges for plunder and murder on file at the War 
Department, were received into the church connected 
with the Institute." General Armstrong says that "he 
never saw a more radical change of life than appeared 
in these men." 

Let us now proceed to the scientific study of moral 
education, the cardinal principle of which has never 
been developed, so far as I know, by any author, or 
fully embodied in the system of any institution, al- 
though it has been very considerably used. That 
cardinal principle is indicated by the fact that each 
department of our nature has a different channel of 
approach, a different mode of manifestation, and a 
different method of culture. The intellect has its 
channel through the eye and its instrument in the 
hand. All impressions on the eye give intelligence, and 
primarily arouse only thought, not feeling or action. 
When feeling or action is roused it is only by a com- 
plex association of ideas, never the primary effect of 
the perception. The intellectual nature of man is in- 
finitely delicate, rapid, and subtile, and therefore cor- 
responds with the subtilty of light, which has 789,- 
000,000,000,000 undulations per second. But the emo- 
tional nature is far slower and less delicate; and is 
therefore adapted to the slower and grosser undula- 
tions of the air. This is the ultimate physical reason 
for the fact that every impression on the ear is pri- 
marily addressed to feeling rather than intelligence. 
The sense of hearing is closely akin to that of feeling, 
and both belong to the anterior part of the middle 
lobe of the brain, which is the emotional lobe, as the 
front is the intellectual lobe. Thus the anatomy of 
the brain shows that the sense of hearing is the true 
emotional sense. 



MORAL EDUCATION. 47 

Hence in reading the printed page we merely ac- 
quire ideas and cultivate the intellect at the expense 
of all the other powers; but in listening to the voice 
of the speaker our feelings also are roused and our 
force of character kept in a vital condition in sympa- 
thy with his emotions. The voice of a friend expresses 
his character, conveys his feelings and rouses our 
feelings irresistibly. Eloquence lies in the tones of 
the voice, and has little to do with the words. The 
sermons with which Whitefield moved the masses so 
powerfully, are of little interest in print. If therefore 
we would excite pure intellect, we must address the 
eye by books and objects; but if we would cultivate 
the emotions, we must address the ear. A system of 
education which does not address the ear may culti- 
vate the intellect, but it produces an abnormal de- 
velopment, leaving the character to degenerate by in- 
activity of the emotions, and taking away our man- 
hood. The larger portion of intellectual education 
has heretofore been of this character, and has actually 
impaired the manhood and the social qualities of the 
student. 

This partial cultivation is abnormal and debilitat- 
ing, for the strength of intellect depends much upon 
the strength of the feelings that act with it. Without 
firmness, energy, hope, and faith the intellect becomes 
feeble and languid. Emotional culture is therefore 
necessary even to the proper development of the in- 
tellect; for the activity cff the whole brain is neces- 
sary to the normal activity of each portion. 

The fundamental rule of moral education therefore 
is that it should be oral or vocal. The pupil should 
be habitually under the influence of the voice of one 
of a higher moral nature than his own. Oral instruc- 
tion is therefore indispensable to moral development, 
while it is by far the most effectual means of intellec- 
tual culture. 

We come next to a still more important and still 
more neglected principle. Voices and moral in- 
fluences are influential as they are nearer to us. In 
physics power or attraction increases inversely as the 



48 MORAL EDUCATION. 

square of the distance. In psychology there is a sim- 
ilar law. But there is no voice so near to us as our 
own, consequently no voice can exert so much power 
as our own in moulding our character. The speaker 
whose deeply pathetic tones bring tears to his hearers' 
eyes feels in himself far more pathos than they 
realize. The hero whose courage in battle inspires 
his followers feels in himself far more courage than 
he can inspire in them. 

Men and all other animals inspire themselves by 
their own voices. The dog barks himself and the 
lion roars himself into a fury; the bird sings itself 
into joy and love; the man by loud and fierce expres- 
sion works himself up into anger, or by kind and sym- 
pathetic expressions melts himself into tears. Hence 
there is no power in moral education equal to the 
voice of the pupil j every time he utters an expression of 
anger he strengthens his fiercer passions. Every time 
he uses the language of politeness, reverence, and 
friendship he strengthens his moral nature. Hence 
there is no exercise of greater moral power and bene- 
fit than declamation, which is made to express with 
passionate eloquence the higher emotions. In this 
lies the power of prayer, when the pupil prays him- 
self with fervor, instead of merely listening to an- 
other. Declamation therefore or eloquent reading 
should be introduced as a prominent exercise, not 
only for elocutionary purposes, but for moral develop- 
ment, and there should be a 'systematic set of such ex- 
ercises for the cultivation of every virtue, and espe- 
cially of those which the pupil chiefly needs. 

But the chief and most beneficent moral exercise is 
that in which the voice goes forth with all its emo- 
tional strength in the expression of feeling by song. 
True song is a gush of feeling, and is therefore moral 
education in its purity. The voice in true song ex- 
presses every feeling — love, courage, joy, devotion, 
sympathy, humor, tranquillity, pride, ambition, or the 
fiercer passions of afiger, fear, hate, scorn and despair. 
There is, no doubt, a miserable kind of empty scienti- 
fic music, without a soul, which moves no feeling and 



MORAL EDUCATION. 49 

has no value. It expresses nothing but the mathemat- 
ical relations of sound, and is of no interest except 
to the scientific student; so there is a plenty of wishy- 
washy literature which has neither eloquence nor pro- 
fundity, but pleases the lovers of rhetorical verbiage. 
This rhetorical verbiage in music has no moral value. 
The real worth of music lies in its eloquence or depth of 
feeling. Song is eloquence united to words, and we 
do not know the power of verse until it is inspired by 
the tones of song. 

"The exquisite harmony of superior performance," 
said Pestalozzi, " the studied elegance of the execu- 
tion may give satisfaction to a connoisseur; but it is 
the simple music which speaks to the heart. The na- 
tional melodies which have from time immemorial 
been resounding in our native valleys are fraught with 
reminiscences of the brightest parts of our history, 
and of the most endearing scenes of domestic life. 
The effect of music in education is not alone to keep 
alive a national feeling; it goes much deeper. If cul- 
tivated in the right spirit, it strikes at the root of every 
bad or narrow feeling, of every ungenerous or mean 
propensity, of every emotion unworthy of humanity. 
Those schools and families in which music has re- 
tained its simple and chaste character, have invariably 
given evidences of moral feeling, and consequently of 
happiness, which leave no doubt of the intrinsic value 
of that art." 

If these views are just, the school in which song is 
not a prominent part of its exercises is not a moral 
school; for song is the great moral element. Songs are 
the highways of angels to human hearts, and when 
you close these highways and shut out the angels the 
devils are free to come in their place. I hold therefore 
that in every moral school there should be from twenty 
to forty minutes daily given to song, in five or six in- 
tervals throughout the day. 

The great power of the church to renovate human 
nature, to take profligate men and lift then as by a 
whirlwind to a higher life, lies in its songs, its congre- 
gational singing. The Methodist Church excels all 



SO MORAL EDUCATION. 

others in moving men, because its people sing with a 
grand fervor, and its ministry carry that fervent spirit 
into the pulpit in all their exercises. They sing to 
embody the fervor of their religion, they raise them- 
selves nearer to the gates of heaven, and they carry 
along with them thousands who came indifferent or 
scoffing and remained to pray. But no finical or high- 
wrought complexity of fashionable tunes will answer 
their purpose. The Methodist song is not decorated 
like an empty-brained fop, but rushes forth in rude 
attire and giant strength, as it asks, "Am I a soldier 
of the cross?" or rejoices in the words " There is a land 
of pure delight." The last national Methodist Con- 
ference held in Louisville expressed its decided feeling 
in favor of simple, pious, and eloquent songs by the 
people against the innovations of musical complexity.* 
It was by the power of song that the poor depraved 
children from Hamburg were subdued to tears at the 
Rauhen Haus, and made such remarkable examples 
of piety and virtue. 

It is strange that the wonderful educational power 

* Professor Nixon said to the Western College of Teachers many 
years ago: 

"A tune composed two hundred years ago will appear new to 
such as never heard it before. But the very fact that it has sur- 
vived two centuries is an evidence of its essential and imperishable 
worth. I shall be asked if my veneration for antiquity leads me to 
suppose that the power of nature to produce composers equal to 
those who have passed from the world is exhausted; and I answer, 
No. But I assert that, beginning with Kirby, who composed his 
"Windsor" in the year 1592 (this solemn melody, two hundred and 
forty years old, I have known to be excluded because it was a. new 
tune), and passing through the oratorios, anthems, and other works 
of Croft, Handel, Green, Purcell, Arne, Blow, Blake, Haydn, 
Smith, Mornington, Randei, Taylor, Carey, Leach, Madan, Wey- 
man, Delamain, and other eminent psalmodists, I can cream a 
richness of melody that I would disdain to taint by a comparison 
with the productions of any man or confederacy of men upon earth. 
Sacred melodies, which shall swell to the vaulted roof of every 
church in Christendom, when the attempts to supplant them by 
patent-noted and anvil-hammered manufactures, though performed 
by even a patent application of steam, shall be deservedly forgotten, 
and when the strains stolen from the Italian opera shall have re- 
turned to their home forever." 



MORAL EDUCATION. 5 I 

of song should have been so long neglected, and so 
entirely excluded from colleges. The Rev. A. D. Mayo 
says: 

"I know not how I should have lived through ten years of the 
strange experiences and crushing and confusing toils of professional 
life in a great western city could I not have been almost every day 
lifted up and cheered by the wonderful singing of the children in 
the Cincinnati common-schools. For often when everything in 
that turbid drift of humanity which we call society seemed whirling 
beyond my power, and I could not see ahead the length of the ship 
I steered, on passing a school-house a wave of song would come 
surging out through an open window, hushing the noisy street, ar- 
resting the hurrying crowd, as if the gates of the better land had 
swung half open, and for a moment we heard the dwellers within 
chanting " Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good-will 
to men." Marry your highest moralities to childhood's music, and 
Young America may yet sing itself within sight of the millennium 
in this new world. 

" A rigid reform is demanded in the selection of music fo-r our 
common-schools. A great deal of it is puerile; too much of it is 
beyond the capacity of children. Some of it can be accounted for 
only by the perverse desire of the special teacher to exhibit his 
musical menagerie. We need more songs of home, of country, of 
simple praise to God and love to man. We need less toil over the 
science of music and more actual singing that shall knit together 
the souls of the scholars into a loving community." 

If I have demonstrated by the examples of Lancas- 
ter, Ohio, of Mettray in France, of the reformatories 
of England, of the Rauhen Haus at Hamburg, and of 
Hofwyl, that moral education can regenerate mankind; 
if I have shown that the chief power of moral educa- 
tion lies in the voice, and that the purest form of this 
power is in song, I am justified in saying that every 
school should have its daily exercises in music, and 
that every teacher should demand them for the bene- 
fit of his pupils and for the benefit of himself, that his 
own soul may be refreshed, and that the burden of 
the labor of government maybe taken from his shoul- 
ders by inspiring the school with that lovely spirit in 
which all duties are performed as pleasures, and the 
rod is an unknown instrument of government. 

Underlying all this practical success is the great 
scientific law that the emotions are controlled through 



52 MORAL EDUCATION. 

the ear; that the ear is the great organ of moral edu- 
cation; that the voice of the pupil is the greatest pow- 
er for his moral culture, and, in short, that the human 
larynx (so long overlooked) is the chief agent in moral 
education, and therefore the most important agent in 
normal intellectual culture, which largely depends on 
moral energy. This principle, which, as an outgrowth 
of anthropology, I presented twenty years ago, is not 
unfamiliar to enlightened teachers to-day, for I do not 
see how any teacher can observe and think without 
arriving at such conclusions himself. The doctrine, 
however, in reference to voice as the agent of moral 
education, and the supreme potency of education for 
virtue as well as for intelligence, may be unfamiliar 
to-day, but it cannot long remain doubtful with earn- 
est thinkers. 

As literature is to the eye and the intellect, so is 
song to the ear and the soul, and as moral energy is 
necessary to intellectual growth, the moral power of 
oral instruction is indispensable to vitalize every school 
in which knowledge is imparted, and give it a strong, 
healthy, normal character, and the rapid progress 
which modern enlightenment and the vast circle of 
the sciences demand. 

That the combination of song and labor with oral 
and visual instruction, social influences, and hygienic 
amusements or exercises constitutes a thorough and 
satisfactory system which I have been accustomed to 
call a " full-orbed education" is not only clear to the 
faculty of reason and demonstrated by the success of 
reformatory schools, but is also most happily dem- 
onstrated by the success of kindergartens, in which 
the appliances of a rational education are utilized to 
the delight and progress of the children. 

If our adolescent education were as wise as that of 
the kindergartens there would have been no occasion 
for this volume. Let me emphasize, then, for adoles- 
cent education the lesson which kindergarten schools 
have illustrated. 

i. The first demand of ethical education illustrated 
by the kindergarten is that the pupil shall be made 






MORAL EDUCATION. 53 

happy. If the teacher has not in his own soul enough 
of the ethical inspiration to desire to make his pupils 
happy he is defective in the most essential quality of 
the teacher — a defect worse than any literary ignor- 
ance — and is incapable of inspiring them with proper 
sentiments. But if he succeeds in making them happy 
he maintains the steady growth of all their better sen- 
timents, secures their ready compliance with his 
wishes and makes them eager to attend the school and 
assist in its progress. The cnief agent for this is the 
voice — the chief method is song. 

2. To secure this happiness and progress, there 
must be no monotony and no fatigue. The younger the 
pupil the more important is this rule, as the capacity 
for enduring monotonous application increases with 
age. 

3. Visible illustration and oral instruction, being far 
more pleasant, wholesome and energizing to the mind 
than reading, should be the chief methods of instruc- 
tion, and the voice of the teacher should be that of a 
mature and superior character. 

4. The delightful and controlling power of vocal 
music should be in frequent use to the extent of 
keeping the higher emotions in continual activity by 
the voice of the pupil, and they should be still further 
cultivated by exercises in reading, recitation, and dec- 
lamation. 

5. The natural desire for activity which belongs to 
all healthy natures should be gratified not only by fre- 
quent changes of position, walking, inarching, danc- 
ing, running, etc., but by doing something useful or 
artistic, as by drawing and modelling, constructing 
with tools, or doing any species of useful work which 
is interesting and gives exercise to the mind. 

6. The controlling will of the teacher should be kept 
in continual operation upon the pupil, by securing his 
affection and confidence, by unyielding firmness in 
command, by the power of the voice in control, and 
by affectionate intercourse and advice. 

7. The religious sentiment, as the most elevated, 
subduing and sanctifying of all human qualities, should 



54 MORAL EDUCATION. 

be kept in lively activity by emotional songs, and by 
familiar expositions of our relations to the divine and 
eternal, and illustrations of all the virtues that ennoble 
human nature, enforced by the application of those 
principles to the conduct and manners of the pupils. 



If the principles of the foregoing address are true 
we may infer 

i. That the ethical character of a teacher is more 
important than his intellectual attainments, and that 
his most important qualification is the power of se- 
curing the love, respect, and voluntary obedience of 
his pupils. 

2. That the enforcement of rules of conduct will 
produce no satisfactory results without the cultiva- 
tion of the emotions which produce the amiable, 
docile, and dutiful nature. 

3. That the more ethical and spiritual nature of 
woman gives her especial qualifications for education- 
al work, and requires her presence in all educational 
institutions. 

4. That a marked improvement in the character, 
deportment, and sentiments of their pupils should be 
demanded of all institutions of education from the 
kindergarten to the university. 

5. That special schools should be established for 
the training of all children of vicious parents, and all 
who manifest their depravity in any form of frequent 
misconduct. 

6. That adults as well as youth should be sub- 
jected to reformatory education, and that all sen- 
tences to imprisonment should consign the culprit 
not to a certain amount of confinement, but to detention 
in a reformatory until reformed and fit for society, as 
the sick and insane are sent to hospitals until cured. 

7. That the moral influence of the teacher and the 
school should be supplemented by the moral influ- 
ence of the best persons in history brought home to 
the pupil in vivid biography. 



CHAPTER III. 
EVOLUTION OF GENIUS.* 

ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL. 

Superior men. — Leadership and rulership. — Development by edu- 
cation. — Love the source of all. — What is genius. — Divine 
love and wisdom. — Infinite knowledge yet to be attained. — 
Antagonism of universities to genius.— Stultifying power of 
schools.- — How to make men think. — The Socratic method ap- 
plied to education. — The shameful record of human stolidity. 
— Method of Mr. Ellis. — The higher plane of thought. — The 
psychological basis. — God is love. — Love an inspiration. — 
Physical science barren. — Incompetence of mere intellect. — ■ 
Necessity of mental adjustment. — Illustration in pictures. — 
Love the adjusting power. — Abnormal philosophies. — Char- 
acter of the philosopher. — Genius, love, hope, and faith. — 
Conjugal love. — Evolution of genius by moral education and 
the education of originality. 

When a man of superior organization, finer tem- 
perament, and more intense vitality addresses us, 
there is a vividness in his ideas, with a freshness in 
his language and a force in his expressions, which 
arouse and interest us. Even when he tells us what 
we already know he makes it interesting. Now and 
then he brings out some interesting remark which had 
not been expressed before, and, feeling that he is ex- 
pressing our own thoughts better than we could have 
done it ourselves, we are charmed with him. 

Such are the superior men of society, who lead 
their time, who are the mouthpieces of their genera- 
tion, and who, embodying in themselves the general 
sentiment of their countrymen, become their leaders 
for the time, and are sometimes called great men; for, 

* An address delivered in 1875 at Louisville, Ky. 



56 EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 

although not intellectually great, they may have per- 
sonal greatness and force of character. 

Such men are the natural riders of mankind; but, 
though it may seem paradoxical, they are not the 
leaders. The true leaders are the pioneers, the men 
who advance beyond their age, who think as future 
ages think and do as future generations do. Such 
men are often neither rulers nor leaders in their lives; 
but being dead, they still speak; their leadership is 
recognized; and at length all humanity advances to 
stand in their footsteps, to think their thoughts and 
to acknowledge their leadership. 

Thus Leadership and Rulership are distinguished. 
The rulership belongs to talent and force; the leader- 
ship belongs to genius and consecration. The rulership 
of talent in all countries fills their historic annals with 
the starry names of heroes and statesmen; the leader- 
ship of genius is rare, like the advent of the comet, 
and a century may pass without a single example. 
Though Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton 
were the clustered leaders of the awakening intellect 
of Europe, none of them were rulers. Copernicus, 
prudently, was quiet in life, and published as he died. 
Kepler, a transcendent genius, was worn out by pov- 
erty and disappointment; mankind have not yet done 
full justice to his memory. Galileo narrowly escaped 
the fires of the martyrdom which consumed the phi- 
losopher Bruno in February, 1600. 

I do not propose to discuss the history of genius, 
but to speak of its genesis or evolution, and must 
first apologize for speaking of the evolution of genius 
as if it were a manufactured product; for it is an ac- 
cepted maxim that the poet is born, not made — " poeta 
nascitur non fit" — and so genius generally has been 
considered an unaccountable divine gift; as Plato, 
after worrying through his Dialectics to find out 
something about virtue, gave it up, and concluded 
that virtue was simply a gift of the gods to their fa- 
vorites. But nowadays we recognize law in all things, 
and do not bring in the " Deus ex machina" when we 
know of tangible causes. 



EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. $? 

I have spoken of the development of virtue not as a 
miraculous gift, but as something which can be as- 
sured by moral education. If that most godlike of 
qualities— for God is love — can be evolved by moral 
education, what is there among the noblest attributes 
of man which may not also be evolved by education ? 

Love is the divinest element of his nature — that 
which assimilates his nature to the great infinite foun- 
tain of life and lifts him up to heaven. This is not 
more a religious than a scientific truth; and many a 
poor wife whose life has been entirely in the shadow 
of disappointment, poverty, toil, and grief, but who 
has lived the life of love, toiling for others, will find 
hereafter that out of that humble, loving life has 
arisen a higher destiny than that of many of the 
world's rulers. 

Out of this divine element of love springs the gran- 
deur of our future life, and out of that same divine 
element come all the grace and beauty of human so- 
ciety — the pervading aroma of a good woman's pres- 
ence, the bright and winning expression of the eyes 
of beauty, the sacredness of home, the charm of 
poetry, the brightness of nature, and finally the lofti- 
ness, the purity, and the fruitfulness of genius. 

Love is an educable faculty; and genius, which 
should be associated with love as the light of the sun 
is with his warmth, is equally educable; for there is 
not a convolution in the brain nor a muscle in the 
body nor a single viscus which may not be cultivated 
and developed, as every physician and every teacher 
of gymnastics understands. 

But what is genius ? That question suggests so 
many trains of ideas it seems too large a theme for a 
discourse. Genius is in one sense that amplitude of 
mind which fills a wider horizon than others know, 
and brings from an untrodden sphere of thought the 
conceptions which to ordinary mortals are unknown, 
wild, and wonderful. Genius is that penetrating 
power of mind which reaches into the deepest arcana 
of nature and brings forth the rarest jewels of 
wisdom. 



58 EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 

Genius is the power which reaches out beyond the 
mechanical habituality of common life to realize a 
better way in all things: a better mode of agriculture 
to fill the land with plenty and with beauty; a better 
style of machinery to lighten human toil and pro- 
mote human comfort; a better style of government 
for the happiness of the governed; a better education 
and literature to elevate the destiny of posterity; a 
truer conception of man, heaven, and the universe to 
illuminate and guide our destiny. 

Genius is not the mere coruscation of language, co- 
piousness of literature, or abstruseness of speculation. 
The so called genius of Plato and of Hegel was but a 
mammoth shell with an almost invisible, worm-eaten 
kernel, scarcely food for a book-worm. The genius 
of Homer and Virgil was but a luminous flow of elo- 
quent language; the so called genius of Aristotle, 
Albertus Magnus, the " angelic doctor" Aquinas, the 
" seraphic doctor" Bonaventura, and the renowned 
Duns Scotus, whose literature governed the dark ages, 
was but a flood of muddy water that drowned the in- 
tellect and stifled the progress of Europe. 

The literati have fixed our attention upon verbal ex- 
pression, the grace of language, and the voluminous 
abstruseness of utterance which has passed too often 
for philosophy, and much of what they have hailed as 
genius is already food for oblivion and the paper- 
mill. 

Genius is not a matter of words; it is a glowing 
reality, a guiding light. The true man of genius is 
he who discovers what other men cannot discover, 
who leads men out of the false into the true, who, if 
listened to, would guide humanity as its guardian 
angel. 

Cutting short our definitions, we may say that the 
test of genius is originality; the power to grasp new 
truths and add to the intellectual wealth of mankind; 
the power to do what all other men cannot do — a 
power which necessarily makes its possessor a leader, 
no matter if he wait a century for followers. Genius 
is therefore the prophet and apostle of human pro- 






EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. $g 

gress. It is the divinest possible manifestation of the 
human soul; and in saying this I do not detract from 
the divinity of love, for love is a necessary influx into 
that complex power which we call genius. Without 
love and hope genius falls prone to earth, and expires 
in gloom, sensualism, and animality. 

Thus do we consider genius the divine love and 
wisdom embodied in man, and therefore the first req- 
uisite for its development is that he should be in 
sympathy with the divine, and should have a truly 
godlike model in his mind for imitation. That god- 
like model he will find when led to its contemplation 
by a true religion, unclouded by any false and debas- 
ing doctrines, and he will learn how to imitate it by 
the examples of illustrious men who have lived to lead 
and bless mankind. But before the understanding is 
expanded to divine contemplation, and before the 
grand historic examples are studied, there is a nearer 
and more attractive influx from the divine; it is the 
lovelight of a mother's eyes. That love is to us the 
representative, the miniature channel of the divine 
love which flows into the creation; that love develops 
the infant soul as the sun develops the buds and 
flowers of spring; and if that influx continue through 
youth and through the whole course of education, 
from other sources as well as the mother, the soul will 
reach its full stature and take hold of the infinite. 

Truth is infinite. The world is full of infinite knowl- 
edge unattained, infinite possibilities not yet realized; 
yet all our knowledge is narrow and inadequate, and 
the majority of the scientific world are not yet aware 
that there is any object of human knowledge but matter 
and its phenomena. 

We do not yet successfully resist the swift ap- 
proaches of disease and death; we do not yet control 
pestilences and epidemics; we do not yet educate men 
into virtue; we have not yet successfully grappled 
with the problem of pauperism; we have not yet re- 
lieved mankind from cruel despotisms; we have not 
yet mastered the problems of government and interna- 
tional law so as to put an end to the infer nalisrn of war. 



60 EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 

Even in physical science and its industrial applica- 
tion, which is our most advanced form of knowledge, 
we have not yet learned to utilize more than one 
tenth of the great mechanical power evolved by fire 
and realized through steam, which is the world's great 
working power. 

Regarding genius as the pioneer, the leader, the re- 
deemer of mankind from barbarism, the immediate 
organ of the divine love, the problem of the evolution 
of genius becomes one of transcendent importance. 
To whom shall we apply for its solution ? 

All evolution belongs to the period of growth. 
Evolution in man therefore belongs to the period 
before birth and the period after it — of youth and 
adolescence. The period before birth belongs to the 
mother, the physician, the physiologist; and the 
mother who does not study some work on the laws of 
hereditary descent has omitted a very important 
duty; the period after birth belongs to the educator, 
and our theme is therefore a very important portion 
of the science of education. 

To speak of the evolution of genius by education 
would seem like ironical mockery to one whose ideas 
of education are derived from the historical university 
which for many dark centuries was as truly the con- 
servator of ignorance as the guardian of -knowledge. 
The universities had no sympathy with Galileo or 
Newton, but manifested a decided hostility. They 
had no sympathy with genius, and their whole course 
of instruction was singularly well adapted to its re- 
pression. Genius was stifled and progress stayed so 
far as their influence could effect it. It was declared 
by Hobbes (in the first half of the seventeenth 
century) that no useful science was taught, and no 
man pretended to know any more than Aristotle taught 
two thousand years before; that the universities were 
really devoted to teaching " Aristotelity" 

Oliver Goldsmith, a century later, said that in his 
day, in the old-fashioned universities of Prague, Lou- 
vain,* and Padua, they spent their time in talking 

* Lou vain had in 1570, 8000 pupils. 






EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 6 1 

Latin and maintaining syllogistic disputations after 
Aristotle, and remarked upon it, " Would not one be 
apt to imagine this was the proper education to make a 
man a fool?" And it was most eminently successful; 
for it preserved the reign of ancient ignorance until 
the sixteenth century, and warred against knowledge 
two centuries longer. The American university is not 
yet emancipated from the influence of mediaeval sys- 
tems, for the majority of them still retain in their 
programme effete and refuted systems of metaphysics. 

I do not therefore think that genius can be 
evolved in education without an entire reversal of the 
ancient system. That system was to confine the mind 
to the exercise of memory and to slavish imitation. I 
have seen that system in American schools deadening 
not only genius but the entire reasoning capacity, and 
doing all that is possible to make the pupil a pedan- 
tic fool; which might have been partially successful 
if the pupils had not picked up enough of shrewdness 
and common sense in the playground and at home to 
counteract the stupefying tendencies of their educa- 
tion. 

I do not mean to imply that schools to-day have the 
stultifying power which many of them had half a cen- 
tury ago. On the contrary, I believe the majority of 
our schools have considerable power in quickening 
and developing intellect. But the intellect which the . 
schools generally develop is not the higher depart- 
ment of the mind. Memory is still the predominant 
faculty; and if that is well stored with knowledge, the 
school is considered satisfactory. But it is not satis- 
factory as a development of mind. With such devel- 
opment alone the human race might go on from age 
to age but little better or wiser than their past. 
China does not neglect education or learning; but the 
Chinese immobility for uncounted centuries is pre- 
cisely what we do not desire, and there is no escape 
from that stagnation except by the cultivation of orig- 
inality, which is the evolution of genius. 

Our problem then is how to make men think for 
themselves — think boldly, clearly, grandly and bene- 



62 EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 

ficially; think for their own welfare and for the wel- 
fare of mankind; think the bright thoughts which 
have never been thought before, which glitter as new 
coin from the treasury of heaven; think the thoughts 
which the age demands, by which great mysteries 
are illuminated, and the problems of science, gov- 
ernment, and sociology resolved. 

If you ask how this is to be done, do not smile if I 
say the way to do it is — to do it; for there is no mys- 
tery or complication about it. The way to learn to 
walk is to begin walking, with help at hand. The way 
to acquire originality is to begin being original, and 
to continue until originality becomes a second nature. 
There is no difficulty in starting children or youth in 
the path of originality. They should never start their 
education in any other way, unless we wish to make 
them parrots. 

Instead of making the child a passive recipient of 
knowledge, he should be made, as far as possible, to 
find out everything for himself. Teachers of natural 
science have found out the value of this method in 
their department, and I think Professor Agassiz rather 
carried it to excess. He would put a young man, 
without books, alone for a whole week with a fish, 
that he might find out everything about it for himself. 
I have been accustomed to deny the indispensable ne- 
cessity of books, but still I have a better opinion of 
their availability than Agassiz expressed, and I do not 
agree w r ith him at all in dispensing with the teacher. 

This method of teaching science has not, so far as I 
know, been adopted by anybody except Mr. Ellis, of 
London, in teaching political economy; and his re- 
sults were so remarkable in making boys superior po- 
litical economists that I can refer proudly to his dem- 
onstration. 

The principle of the method is that the pupil shall 
do for himself and depend upon himself in every case 
in which it is possible. I would have him construct 
his own arithmetic and his own geometry as far as 
possible and with as little help as possible, and the 
function of the teacher should be to stimulate him by 



EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 63 

asking questions, and to help him on in those ques- 
tions which he could not answer, or show him how to 
find an answer when he is at a loss. 

Thus I would begin in arithmetic, when he has 
learned to count, by counting in concert, looking at 
the numbers all the while, and learning to judge of 
their appearance; and my first step would be to ask 
him to add together z's with the balls before him, 
and determine the product. Two and two more make 
four, and two more make six, etc. Then he should 
add by 3's, by 4's, by 5's, and so on, as high as nec- 
essary, going over it every day, until he could add 
the largest sums he could recollect with facility, always 
determining the matter for himself. Then he should, 
by a trifling variation, commence multiplying; and 
after growing familiar with multiplication, having 
worked it all out for himself, I would ask him to make 
a correct multiplication-table, never helping him ex- 
cept to correct his mistakes, and keep him repeating 
until he can multiply together any two numbers not 
exceeding a thousand. In like manner I would carry 
him through division, simply leading him along by 
questions, telling him little or nothing; and through 
subtraction, till he could readily handle mentally num- 
bers of five or six places, or as large numbers as he 
could recollect. By the same Socratic method of ques- 
tioning he should be carried through fractions, dec- 
imals, proportion, and all the processes of arithmetic, 
developing the reasons and making the rules for him- 
self, never receiving a rule from his teacher. This 
method is already to so great an extent adopted in 
mental arithmetic that I may refer to its success as 
the best argument for my doctrine. 

In like manner I would lead him through geome- 
try, teaching him by suggestive questions to find out 
every demonstration for himself, as far as possible. 
This method is peculiarly applicable in the study of 
physics or natural philosophy. As a specimen of 
the method I would show how to present the steam 
engine. 

I would not begin by describing it, or by asking 



64 EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 

him to read a description which he could not under- 
stand. I would make him go to work and invent a 
steam-engine himself, under the stimulus of questions; 
thus: Would it not be a lucky thing, my son, if we 
could find something more powerful than horses, and 
cheaper also, to do all our hard work ? Yes. Do you 
know anything in nature that is more powerful than 
horses that could be used ? One suggests thunder, 
another the cataract of Niagara, another a blast of 
gunpowder, another a swift river. I reply that light- 
ning has been used, but it was found too expensive 
when made artificially. Gunpowder has been used, 
but could we afford to use that ? Do you know what 
a pound of gunpowder costs ? We agree then that 
gunpowder is too expensive. We agree also that a 
cataract of water is a very cheap power, and they 
have heard of water-mills. But I reply we want to 
use a power all over the country where there is no 
strong current of water. What can we use ? 

If they have never heard of the power of steam, 
I would perform a little experiment, putting a small 
kettle on a hot fire, with some water in it and a tight 
lid. The water whizzes through the spout in steam; 
I cork the spout firmly, and soon the steam blows 
off the top and makes a sensation. Then I catechise 
them till they explain that the fire turned the water 
into steam, and the steam displayed its expansive 
powers. I try it again, put a heavy weight on the lid, 
and have it blown off. Then I say, Measure the lid 
and tell me how much force or pressure there must 
have been on each square inch of that lid to throw 
off this ten-pound weight. We make other experi- 
ments. A metallic flask of water has a ten-pound 
weight on its stopper, and we heat it by a gaslight until 
the weight is blown off. But in all these cases I make 
the boys suggest the form of experiment themselves. 

I then ask them how we can conduct that steam 
into some kind of machine and make it work. They 
soon suggest a cylinder and a piston, and the steam 
to be let in under the piston, so as to do lifting work. 
But if you lift the handle of a pump with your piston, 



EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 65 

I say, how will you pull it down ? They will then 
propose to close both ends of the cylinder and let in 
the steam through a pipe at each end alternately. 
Next they propose to fix a stop-cock on each tube and 
let in the steam on each side successively. If we 
have not an apparatus to show it, we draw it on a 
blackboard as we progress. We have now a cylinder 
and piston; with scape-valves, and two steam-pipes to 
supply them, and one boy at each end to let on and 
let off the steam. They go through the working of it 
for awhile, until they are familiar with the working and 
the handling of the valves. I ask them if they could 
not manage to save the trouble of two boys working 
the valves by being as smart as the boy who first found 
a substitute for his own work by making the engine 
work its own valves. After many suggestions we 
agree on a plan for valve-rods to be worked by the 
piston. Then we discover that the engine is rather 
an irregular rattle-trap, and after a little catechising 
they propose a fly-wheel to make it steady. 

Having thus constructed a high-pressure steam-en- 
gine, we go back and see if we cannot improve the 
boiler so as to make more steam or use less fuel. We 
catechise again, and the boys soon discover it is nec- 
essary to put the fire in a furnace, to make its walls 
non-conducting — to boil the water in tubes which are 
safe instead of a big boiler which is dangerous. We 
discover the barbarism of our present huge exploding 
and homicidal cylinder boilers. We go through the 
entire science of boiler-making, inventing sectional 
boilers, spiral boilers, and tubular boilers, and find out 
the merits of each; in fact, until we have brought our 
invention up to the very perfection of the last com- 
pound steam-engines. 

After a few months' practice in this way the in- 
genuity of the boys will be developed; they will in- 
vent with facility, and require little assistance; all 
kinds of water-powers, condensing engines, water- 
pressure engines, water-rams, hot-air engines (low- 
pressure and high-pressure), gas-engines, water-mills, 
wind-mills, digging-machines, excavators, ploughs, 



66 EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 

rock-crushers, air-blast engines, spinning- and weaving- 
machines, ice-machines,will be developed in their minds 
and sketched on the blackboard by their own hands. 

After a full course of such practice they will be- 
come independent of the teacher, and will learn to do 
their own catechising. The teacher need only give 
them the problem, and leave them to catechise them- 
selves into the solution as they had been doing before. 

He will propose such problems as these: Here is a 
steam-engine minutely described in an engineering 
magazine; look at its details and see if the consump- 
tion of fuel can be diminished by any change; or, 
Here is the plan of a mill such as is now in operation; 
where could it be improved; or, Here is an enormous 
water-power running to waste at the falls of the Ohio; 
look at the situation and see how it might be utilized. 

In such education the reasoning and inventive 
powers have their best possible training, developing 
an inventive fertility which would advance the arts in 
our country more in ten years than they usually ad- 
vance in a century. 

What a shameful record of human stolidity it is to 
see the almost universal ignorance of scientific prin- 
ciples, the destitution of originality, or even the power 
to appreciate originality when it comes in our poverty 
and need to lead us like the pillar of fire by night 
toward the land of plenty! How slow and difficult 
the toil of Watt to introduce the steam-engine! How 
cruel the persecution of its early inventors: the Mar- 
quis of Worcester impoverished, insulted, and treated 
as a madman or impostor; Papin abused, impover- 
ished, reviled, and dying so obscure the date and place 
of his death are unknown! How contemptible the 
ignorance and incredulity which hovered around 
Robert Fulton, doubting even after he had sailed to 
Albany whether he could return to New York! How 
humiliating the record of that legislative committee 
of New York which reported that railroads were en- 
tirely impracticable, and gave reasons to prove it! 
How scandalous the fact that in our American Con- 
gress the first proposition to aid so very simple an 



EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 6j 

invention as the magnetic telegraph of Prof. Morse 
was met by the coarse, vulgar ridicule of Cave 
Johnson! How sad the experience of Thomas Gray, 
who gave his whole life to overcoming the aggregate 
scientific stupidity of Great Britain and introducing 
railroads, but who when stupidity was vanquished and 
railroads a success received neither honor nor profit 
for his noble work! And here upon this soil of 
Louisville were the footsteps of the pioneer inventor 
of steamboats, John Fitch, who died in obscurity and 
melancholy at Bardstown, shortening his life by sui- 
cide, as did also Horace Wells, the discoverer of 
anaesthesia! John Fitch, who actually made a success- 
ful steamboat navigate the Delaware at Philadelphia 
in 1787 from seven to ten miles an hour, and then, 
having, as he said, endured coarse mockery and in- 
sults and as much torment in the enterprise as if he 
had been torn limb from limb, repeating in his own 
life exactly the experience of Papin a hundred years 
before, turning about in grim despair because he could 
obtain neither sympathy nor co-operation, emigrating 
to the West, and here wandering along this broad and 
beautiful river, contemplating in vision, as he said, the 
fleets of steamboats which were destined to deck that 
stream, died in obscurity — a man whom the nation 
should have cherished in life and honored in death. 
He only hoped that his invention would be appre- 
ciated " when I am sleeping under the poplar in the 
lofty forests of Kentucky." 

Ah! when we have an education of the reasoning 
and creative intellect nations will no longer starve or 
slay their benefactors; and the men who were sent to 
be our leaders out of barbarism will no more have to 
say, as a gifted, inventive American said, " I was born 
in the slaughter-house of genius, and I have struggled 
on the block from the hour of my nativity/' It is 
still as true as it has been that, in the language of 
Mackay, 

" The man is thought a knave or fool, 

Or atheist plotting crime, 
Who for the advancement of his kind 

Is wiser than his time." 



68 EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 

Why do mankind thus war upon the originality of 
genius, which is the sacred channel of divine benev- 
olence, before which we should bow in reverence, 
and over which we should erect triumphal arches! 
The bloody conqueror of nations is honored with the 
tallest and most costly monument in France; but the 
inventor of the steam-car, Evans — the conqueror of 
poverty and toil, James Watt, who enriched an em- 
pire, and did more to build up than Bonaparte did to 
destroy — their names are not in all men's mouths. 
The godlike creative and redeeming genius of such 
men is neither recognized in life nor even duly hon- 
ored in death, because the creative and redeeming 
faculties lie dead and undeveloped by education in 
mankind. 

What would Paganini have been to a nation with- 
out music but a poor fiddling, starving vagabond; 
what would Lord Byron have been to a nation with- 
out literature; what would La Place and Newton have 
been to nations without science ? Not half as much 
as Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, or Captain Jack. 

And in like manner what is an original creative 
genius in a nation in which the creative faculties are 
neither cultivated nor understood ? An exile from its 
heavenly home, wandering amid solitude. Galileo 
was but an impostor among the syllogizing professors 
of Padua; Galvani at a later period was but a " frog's 
dancing-master." The representative of creative ge- 
nius is like the apostle of an unknown religion, and 
lucky if he escape martyrdom; for men do not dwell 
in the creative sphere of thought, and have no sym- 
pathy with its representatives. Mere intellect cannot 
and does not sustain such men. Without the inspira- 
tion of hope and love their labors would instantly 
cease, to seek a more profitable sphere. For, as Whit- 
tier says, 

" Every age on hirn who strays 
From its broad and beaten ways 

Pours its sevenfold vial. 
Happy he whose inward ear 
Angel comfortings can hear 



EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 69 

O'er the rabble's laughter; 
And while hatred's faggots burn 
Glimpses through the smoke discern 

Of the good hereafter." 

These " angel comfortings" come to him through 
hope and love, enabling John Fitch to see the fleets of 
steamboats coming; enabling Froebel when treated as 
a lunatic or fool to press on to success in establishing 
the kindergarten; enabling Socrates to see that the 
perishing of his body by hemlock was the emancipa- 
tion of his soul. 

I have sometimes queried whether there would not 
be hereafter a higher race of men of more noble de- 
velopment, among whom the messengers of heaven 
would not be frozen or stoned. But then I saw we 
need no higher race to put an end to this Deicidal 
crime. We need only to educate and develop the 
grand ideal in man. As we might establish schools 
of music in a nation to which music was almost un- 
known, so we might establish schools of original 
genius. Not establishing special schools for that, but 
making every school a school of originality. It is nec- 
essary to teach men independent thinking, original 
reasoning; something which we do not find in history, 
which we do not find to-day except in a few ad- 
vanced minds. Hallam says that man, " speaking of 
him collectively, has never reasoned for himself, is 
the puppet of impulses and prejudices, be they for 
good or for evil." 

But some friend may suggest that genius means 
more than originality in mechanics. Undoubtedly; it 
means originality in all things; in statesmanship and 
literature, and, above all, in philosophy, which is the 
masterly conception of the universe of man — his na- 
ture and destiny. I have not time now to show how 
originality in philosophy might be taught. But I can 
give a parallel illustration in showing how Mr. Ellis 
did teach political economy to the poor boys of 
London till he made them philosophers on that 
subject. Briefly, he made these boys construct their 
own political economy; and the brilliant result de- 



70 EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 

scribed to me by Prof. Leverson is a sufficient demon- 
stration of my entire doctrine. 

For example: Mr. Ellis with his boys would take up 
the common industrial employments and examine 
their general course, the boys stating what they knew 
in answer to questions, and the deficit being made up 
by his own statements. He would say, Men plough and 
sow, reap and mow, grind and bake to procure bread. 
Each of these operations would be examined in itself 
and in connection with others, all great industrial em- 
ployments being reviewed. The question being asked 
how men are supported while they are engaged in the 
work of ploughing, mowing, etc., leads to the percep- 
tion that the food and clothing procured by previous 
labor were necessary to sustain them; in other words, 
capital must co-operate with labor; and the repro- 
ductive consumption of the laborer is distinguished 
from unproductive consumption. The truth was 
brought out by the catechising process that men by 
pushing their own interests according to the natural 
laws of business produce the greatest aggregate 
wealth, and that all artificial interference with these 
laws has a disastrous tendency. The whole subject 
of wages, supply, and demand was so thoroughly de- 
veloped that Prof. Leverson expressed the opinion 
that if this instruction were common, there would 
never be another strike for wages from the clear per- 
ception by all of the impolicy of such violent measures. 
I have the testimony of Prof. Leverson that few mem- 
bers of parliament even were better instructed in po- 
litical economy than these poor boys taught by the 
catechetic system, which compels reasoning and orig- 
inality. 

My intelligent friends will readily concede that by 
compelling youth to be original, as you compel boys 
to swim by throwing them in deep water and taking 
care they do not drown, we may teach them how to 
invent, how to discover, how to solve practical and 
philosophical problems, how to take hold of every dif- 
ficult question in a practical and philosophic way, 
and how to attain results which astonish the conser- 



EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 7 1 

vative people who are governed by habit and led by 
fashion or public opinion — who have perhaps gradu- 
ated with honor under the great Professor Humdrum, 
who kept them in subjection by the dignified order, 
" None of that; give us your answer in the words of 
the learned author" 

But, says one, your method will doubtless develop 
common sense, shrewdness, ingenuity, and indepen- 
dence of mind; but genius is something above and 
beyond all that — a promethean spark which will not 
flow through any such galvanic battery as you propose; 
it must come in a flash from above. 

There is a flash of truth in that remark, and nothing 
more. There are moments of the inspiration of 
genius in which, I believe, the fortunate man rises to 
a higher heaven of wisdom and breathes a diviner air 
than he knows in his daily life. But this never comes 
to him who lives in the lowlands of mechanical habit- 
uaiity, but only to him who lives on a higher table- 
land, where the lightning sometimes flashes on his 
own level, and where he ever greets the first rosy light 
of morning, while the valley lies in darkness, and mist. 
In other words, it is the man of pure and lofty thought, 
ever ready to welcome the first faint auroral gleam of 
a dawning unknown truth, who is in a position to in- 
vite that inspiration which is like the faint daybreak 
of a greater and diviner illumination. 

The ultimate purpose of this original system of edu- 
cation is to lift as many as possible to this higher 
plane of thought, believing that many who have 
learned to aspire and climb by their own strength 
will take " Excelsior" for their motto. But it would 
be a very imperfect statement of the original system of 
education if I left it here to be considered merely as a 
rugged and laborious system of self-reliant originality 
designed for triumph in the toils and problems of 
life. In the higher department of education in which 
we teach philosophy, the laws, the nature, the methods, 
and the genesis of genius should be made known and 
brought into practice. 

In discussing this subject we necessarily enter the 



72 EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 

sphere of those profound and subtile principles of 
psychology which belong to that unfolding science of 
man to which my life has been devoted; principles 
which cannot be presented now, because one is so in- 
terlinked with another and so connected with experi- 
mental facts not yet published that I should but leave 
the subject in confusion if I should attempt to present 
briefly the psychological basis of educational philos- 
ophy. But holding that truth rightly understood is 
not mysterious, though it may be vast and complex, 
and having no mysterious principles to present, I would 
briefly state some of the more obvious features of the 
system of evolution of genius beyond mere original- 
ity without pretending even to sketch the entire sys- 
tem. Out of the ten leading principles I would select 
one. 

In the first place, God is love. You may call that 
theology, but I beg leave also to call it philosophy — 
and a very pregnant principle in philosophy. 

For love is the creative energy, without which nothing 
is. This universe is its expression, and we are amongst 
its brightest expressions. Our lives are but a stream 
of embodied love. They are the product of that love 
which budded and blossomed thirty, forty, fifty, or 
sixty years ago, and the record of which is to be 
found on many a mossy tombstone. That which is 
not born of love is not born at all; it is only some 
hideous cataclysm or precipitant ruin; for evil or hate 
is not creative, but destructive only. Therefore, if we 
would have the truly creative genius, it must be in- 
spired by the truly creative element. If we would 
have intellect in its loftiest form, it must be lifted by 
the inspiring and aspiring element to its highest 
sphere. The solid intellect of physical science has in 
itself no aspiration, no capacity to rise above the dead 
forms of matter. It is grand and powerful in its own 
sphere; but its sphere is to crawl on the earth, like the 
colossal dinotherium or the mighty iguanodon of pre- 
historic ages. A mind rigidly confined to the spirit 
and modes of physical science is utterly incompetent 
to philosophy and barren of creative power, as we see 



EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 73 

in the modern speculations of Spencer, Buchner, Scho- 
penhauer, and Lewes. 

Physical science, seeking to know what is in ma- 
terial existence, and learning, merely seeking to know 
what has been, are void of productive tendencies except 
as the basis from which to project the future. It 
is the reasoning power that projects the future and 
gives the capacity, when properly guided and impelled, 
to produce anything better than the imperfect past. 
But in projecting the future it depends upon our 
psychic forces whether we project it upward or down- 
ward. Hope sees all things aspiring and the divine 
love lifting all up; despair sees all toppling to ruin 
and a legion of devils busy in destruction. Unless we 
see the good in the future we cannot work for its evo- 
lution; in fact we know nothing of it, and all our 
labors are barren of good as those of the despondent 
physician who gives up his patient as hopelessly mor- 
ibund. 

Intelligence draws and paints the future; but if in 
our grand magazine of sentiment there are no bright 
colors, we necessarily paint it dark and thus libel both 
God and man, For all the good in the future that we 
can perceive, for all the good that we can create, we 
are indebted to that transcendent element of human- 
ity which portrays the good and bright in the future 
and reveals the exalted possibilities dormant in the 
present.* That element which in conjunction with 
reason reveals the good and guides us to it is a tran- 
scendent element in which the virtues cluster together 
— the virtues of faith, love, and hope. The aggregate 
virtue is expressed by no word in our language, 
though it may be partially represented by the word 
glory. 

I wish you to see without a labored demonstration, 
to see as I do, that God is love; and that everything 

* " The affirmative of affirmatives is love. As much love, so much 
perception. As caloric to matter, so is love to mind; so it en- 
larges and so empowers it. Good-will makes insight." — Emerson 
07t Success. 



74 EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 

good and godlike any where is also lovely and in- 
spired by love. But when that divine element is 
absent, when there is nothing lovely, hopeful, or glo- 
rious, there is no creative power and none of the rich 
blessings which flow from divine wisdom. 

Perhaps some hard-headed and profound philoso- 
pher will pronounce all this an illusion; will say pure 
reason is the power that discovers truth: reason alone 
is the arbiter, and all you say of love and hope is but 
the illusion of sentiment, which inevitably misleads 
us. 

I reply to such a philosopher, you do not know the 
elementary principles of psychology; you understand 
human nature as little as Plato, Kant, and Hobbes. 
Pure reason is but a mathematical draughtsman, and 
has no coloring for its landscapes. It has no appre- 
ciation for good or evil, beauty or deformity, justice 
or injustice. What is the loveliest young lady, even 
if a perfect Venus, to a pure reasoner who has no 
other faculties — who knows nothing of beauty or 
love ? She is simply one hundred and ten pounds of 
oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, and a 
few minor elements combined in organic forms of 
bioplasm, and organized in cells capable of locomo- 
tion, secretion, sensation, mastication, and cogitation; 
or, as Spencer would say, she is a functional product 
of the reaction between the bioplasm and the environ- 
ment. 

That is the hard, mechanical conception of the pure 
reasoner. The " love and hope and beauty's bloom" 
of the poet are to the pure reasoner merely waves of 
molecular agitation in the centric nervous ganglia, and 
the motion of red corpuscles invited by vascular ere- 
thism of cutaneous capillaries. The little infant in 
the cradle of the Washington mansion in Virginia was 
to a pure reasoner merely a progressively organizing 
mass of ten pounds of unfinished bioplasm, but to the 
loving genius of the mother it was the germinal hero 
and statesman that led the armies of the young re- 
public to a glorious independence. 

Pure reason is blind as a bat in the study of char- 



EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 75 

acter until inspired by sentiment: and women, though 
seldom pure reasoners, are so richly endowed with 
sentiment as generally to be quick and correct judges 
of character. 

Pure, unfeeling reason, isolated from its nobler al- 
lies, has no power to discern in the germinal present 
the blossoming glory of the future. Without the sen- 
timent of love no man can know the worth and no- 
bility of woman; without the sentiment of reverence 
he can have no proper conception of the Deity. Pure 
reason only traces out a formless necessity or a pan- 
theistic abstraction. So without the parental love he 
cannot appreciate the merits of a child, and without 
the deep philosophic love, or love of philosophy, which 
is the love of all truth, he cannot appreciate, under- 
stand, love, cherish, and protect those infant truths, 
those fresh-born sciences, which the vulgar herd 
would freeze or starve or exterminate, but which the 
loving philosopher cherishes, nourishes, and defends 
at the sacrifice of fame, social honor, and life itself, 
that the germinal truth may rise in grandeur to bless 
posterity. We live in the rich enjoyment of many a 
truth, many an invention, many a social right and priv- 
ilege developed by a martyr devotion equal to that 
of the mother who faints and dies in toiling for her 
offspring. 

The glorious truths of American liberty came not 
from pure, cold reason, but from the warm hearts of 
our patriot forefathers. The principles of religious 
liberty have been won for us by men who would give 
their lives, and the truths of religion have sprung 
from the ground enriched by the best blood of the 
race. 

It is brave, generous and loving toil which develops 
all that is good. It is the generous, loving, philan- 
thropic soul which sees the vast beneficent tendency 
of all great truths, which never asks the stupid ques- 
tion of cut bono, or what is the use of it; but quickly 
perceiving the much-loved features of truth, as the 
mother would perceive those of her child, rushes to its 
side to cherish and defend it. It is obvious enough 



7 6 



EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 



that the generous, noble, loving emotions make us 
seek, espouse, and defend the truth; but it is equally- 
true that they enable us to discover the truth, and 
that love is the essential inspiration of wisdom. 

We perceive and comprehend nothing unless the 

mind is in harmony with the conception desired. If I 

Jook steadfastly at my finger thus, the eye and the 

mind are adjusted to the conception of an object at 

the distance of ten inches, and they cannot recognize 




•if you look at the dark figures, 
nothing else." 



YOU WILL SEE 



anything at the end of the hall; or if I look at the end 
of the hall, I do not see my fingers, or I see them in a 
dim and contradictory way, each finger seeming to be 
in two different positions. Hence to perceive any- 
thing the mind must be adjusted to that perception. 
So if you look at the dark figures, the fowls, in this 
picture, which appear to be looking out for an enemy, 
you will see nothing else. I showed it to a very intel- 
lectual friend, and he could see nothing but the fowls, 
although I assured him there was a fox among them. 



EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 



77 



Yet after the mind was adjusted to the conception of 
the fox he could not help seeing it. So when I exhib- 
ited this picture of a skull, an emblem of death, it 
was not until the mind was adjusted to a different con- 
ception that it was perceived to be merely an arch 
which opened to view a totally different scene; and 
instead of death and decay it embodied youth and 




hope. Thus it 
student of life 



is that the materialistic superficial 
sees death alone, and the vast globe 
seems but the cemetery of extinct races; but when we 
look into the scene with the far-reaching vision of 
loving genius we see that death is only a formal illu- 
sion, and that beyond that illusion is the heaven of 
eternal truth. 

But we do not see this without the proper mental 



78 EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 

adjustment — the far-reaching vision. The adjusting 
power which gives us the beatific vision is love, using 
that word as the representative of our celestial nature; 
the telescope of intelligence swings in the frame of 
emotion and passion which lifts its range to the su- 
pernal heights of divine truth, or sinks it down to 
gloom, bestiality, rage, and sensuality, or, sinking it 
still lower, plunges it in the grave of insanity. 

The spectator who looked at a jury and supposed 
them to be the group of robbers on trial easily saw a 
villainous look in all of them, for he was looking at 
them in the spirit of vindictive hostility, unrestrained 
by any kind sentiment, and therefore his conclusion 
was false and devilish. And so are the conclusions of 
all who look at nature and the universe without being 
themselves in harmony with the divine spirit and love 
from which all nature came. 

To appreciate a picture your mind must be in har- 
mony with the conceptions of the painter when he 
painted it. The cannibal savage who looks at a fine 
picture of a lovely woman and exclaims, " Humph! 
fat young squaw! good meat!" has no more under- 
standing of that picture than the "pure reasoning'* 
philosophizer has of the universe when he looks at a 
world all full of wise and exquisite adaptations, all 
full of budding life, of developed beauty, of ascend- 
ing progress, and a towering destiny for man that 
pinnacles its height in the boundless heaven, shrouded 
from common vision lest it should make earth seem 
too dull by contrast, and looking at all this with eyes 
that scarcely pierce beyond the tobacco-smoke and 
beer around him, entirely unconscious of all that is 
above him, inspired only by the dim darkness in his 
own soul, speaks of this world as one vast godless, 
dreary scene of inflexible fate and pitiless law, in 
which nothing is perceived but miserable forms of 
animal life, hopeless and suffering, and quickly rot- 
ting back in the foul earth to reproduce similar worth- 
less and miserable beings; a world in which the 
highest bliss is not to be born, or being born to die a 
quick and easy death. Such a conception, which in 



EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 79 

Germany is by some called philosophy, is the natural 
outcome of that long series of morbid speculations 
which from the time of Plato and Aristotle has af- 
flicted the mind of Europe, and led it into a sleep of 
centuries like the phantoms that led Rip Van Winkle 
into the cave of his long rheumatic slumbers. 

These false and morbid views of philosophy — the 
best of which are but cobwebs that can exist only in 
the closet — are entitled to be examined and swept out 
of the entire area of literature, for they are not the 
offspring of normal human intelligence, but of in- 
tensely abnormal thought, as I think I have shown in 
my review, " Philosophy and the Philosophers. " 

No philosophy is normal in which the bright com- 
panionship of the celestial sentiments is not admitted, 
for no one can rightly conceive the plan and opera- 
tions of nature without placing his own mind in har- 
mony with the divine impulse, from which all nature 
sprung into being. 

This is pre-eminently true in reference to the mas- 
terpiece of creation, the constitution of man, which 
will continue to be a mystery, as it is to-day confes- 
sedly in all the universities, until man shall be 
studied in the normal method. Not only is the phi- 
losophy of man confessedly unknown to-day, but the 
leading systems of modern speculation are intensely 
and perniciously false. The mechanical man conceived 
by Spencer and Huxley differs more from the man of 
divine creation than a waxen imitation differs from the 
fragrant, blooming, and self-perpetuating rose of the 
garden. 

And dreary systems of false philosophy must still 
be produced while through ignorance of right prin- 
ciples men continue their abnormal thinking. The 
mind of man in its full-orbed development is in entire 
harmony with the plan of creation, and spontaneously 
evolves the truth, but when debased or deformed it 
necessarily distorts the truth and evolves falsehood. 

Philosophizing heretofore has been, if not by de- 
formed minds, often by minds that voluntarily de- 
formed themselves, and laid aside their noblest 



8o EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 

powers to reason out creation as a problem in me- 
chanics. When by purblind speculation Hobbes and 
Mandeville decided that we had no moral faculties at 
all; when Condillac decided that we had none but 
perception and association; when Descartes and Male- 
branche decided that animals had no thoughts or 
feelings, but were as much machines as a mill or a 
wheelbarrow (and Prof. Huxley attempts to revive a 
similar notion), — we see the folly of abnormal specu- 
lation by men who suppress some of the most impor- 
tant faculties of common sense. St. Paul was very 
right in his day in warning against vain philosophies; 
and he could find as many even to-day. 

All our powers, and especially our higher powers, 
in their completeness are necessary to correct concep- 
tions of man and the universe ; and he who omits the 
large portion of the circle which belongs to our ce- 
lestial nature will fare about as well as if he should 
look through a telescope with the lenses cut down to 
a semi-circle. 

In the full circle of the human soul, that part which 
can least be spared, that part most essential to the 
bright pictures of genius, is the very portion against 
which the pruning knife of the stupid pedant or of the 
dogmatic scientist is most often directed, and which, 
if it should escape their fatal handling, is often killed 
by the clubs and stones of the senseless mob. 

I do not mean mere imagination, though that is 
very near it, but that high comprehensive and creative * 
imagination of genius which intuitively perceives thej 
divine plan, and is therefore in entire harmony withV 
it, and is never astonished or surprised at anything, 
because it dimly anticipates or divines all truths 
before they are revealed to mankind. The character 
of the true philosopher, according to Herschel, was 
that he should " hope all things not impossible and 
believe all things not unreasonable. " So hoping and 
believing, he is ever anticipating something which 
when it comes delights him, but astonishes and con- 
founds all other men, and perhaps excites their denial 
and hostility. There never was a true genius, a true 



EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 8 1 

philosopher, who did not believe and know much that 
his contemporaries considered false and visionary, and 
any one may easily test his own claims to the posses- 
sion of genius or philosophy by the simple question, 
Have I ever believed anything important in advance 
of society which has since been demonstrated true, or 
have I always denied its truth and opposed its recep- 
tion until others forced it upon me ? 

I believe the original system of education will bring 
all men in time to the principle and duty of welcoming 
and actively assisting progress, and when that comes 
such will be the rapid and enormous advancement of 
human thought that there will be mountains of old 
books to pile away in the catacombs of extinct litera- 
ture ; certainly all things not touched by the prome- 
thean fire of genius. Finally, the practical conclusion 
from all this is that genius, by the very law of its 
being, is consecrated to the service of good, to the 
progress of humanity, and can exist upon no other 
terms, for when it leaves its higher path it ceases to 
be genius. Another important conclusion is that for 
the sake of genius, for the sake of philosophy, it is es- 
sential that man should love and hope. 

Hence I infer that the woman who wins the deepest 
love of a man and makes the world seem brighter 
when she is near confers upon him the greatest bless- 
ing she can give, and the nation blessed with such 
women is destined to pre-eminence. The sight of 
female beauty on Fourth Street is something more 
significant than a gallery of pleasing pictures. It ex- 
presses the wealth of soul and the angelic influx of an 
elevating power. That loveliness which is a blessing 
in life does not cease to bless when its material ele- 
ments are decomposed, for from its home above it is a 
sanctifying memory ever calling us to come up 
higher. There is no holier church among us than 
Cave Hill Cemetery, no sweeter contemplation than 
that of the flowers that have been transplanted to 
heaven. 

It is in that direction genius finds its home; and the 
man who attempts to develop genius without love, 



82 EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 

hope, and faith, without originality, or without de- 
parting from the beaten track is violating the order 
of nature, and his gemus will be but a barren fig- 
tree. We have signal examples of all this through 
history from the dawn of civilization ; and especially 
in some who were credited with wonderful genius — 
the old bachelor philosophers, or, as Lord Bacon 
would say, " Philosophasters" — Plato, Descartes, 
Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, and Hume, all old bach- 
elors. Leibnitz when he had an opportunity of mat- 
rimony reconsidered the matter, and decided that, 
although matrimony was a good thing, a philosopher 
ought to deliberate and hesitate over it as long as he 
lived, and so he died in his doubts, faithless and wife- 
less. The philosophies of many old bachelors were 
distinguished by their dreary dryness and singular 
absence of common sense. The great question which 
agitated their solitary souls was whether the world 
exists or not, whether all we see of this great globe 
and the immense solar system and stars is a reality or 
only a dream. It is sad to reflect upon the deeds of 
that mighty confraternity of bachelors who have so 
long overshadowed and darkened European civiliza- 
tion by their warfare against science and religious 
sincerity, their dungeons, inquisitions and wars. We 
breathe freer now that their power is forever broken. 

On the other hand, all history glitters with the 
names of men, from Pericles and Anthony to Abelard 
and Goethe, to whom love has been the charm of life 
and the inspiration of genius. Of the greatest geolo- 
gist of England, who has just passed away, Sir Charles 
Lyell, it was said, " Like Mill and Grote, he found his 
best assistant and inspiration in a gifted wife, who 
passed away two years ago, and at whose death he 
remarked that he should follow her in a couple of 
years." 

The kind of genius which a good woman may in- 
spire was visible in the noble head and face of Lyell 
and in his devotion to truth. Dean Stanley said, " He 
followed truth with a sanctified zeal, a childlike 
humility. For discovering, confirming, rectifying his 



EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 83 

conclusions there was no journey he would not under- 
take. From early youth to extreme old age it was to 
him a religious duty fearlessly to correct all his own 
mistakes, and he was always ready to receive from 
others and reproduce that which he had not in him- 
self. In his mind science and religion were indivisi- 
ble." Though free, heterodox, and revolutionary in 
his opinions, orthodoxy admired and the queen hon- 
ored him. 

In all private histories we find the same moral. 
Every man and every woman to whom nature has 
been kind can remember the gleam of a dawning in- 
spiration when the roses and zephyrs of a moonlight 
night in June were matched with the fragrance and 
brightness of a human soul. Who is so poor and lonely 
in spirit as not to have been at some time thus in- 
spired, and felt the moving elements of poetry within, 
seen all nature in a lovelier light, and cast a hope- 
ful glance far down the vista of futurity, lined with 
bright " castles in Spain." 

" Though other lights may shine 
On life's calm stream, 
There's nothing half so sweet in life 
As love's young dream. " 

So it was in the dawn of modern literature in the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when every year pro- 
duced a new poet. Love was the inspiration, the 
universal theme, and the songs of Abelard to Eloise 
were heard in every house. The grace of literature 
and the refinement of chivalry had the same inspira- 
tion. The knight was loyal to his God and loyal to 
his lady-love in the same heroic spirit. 

Thus we see though physical science and religion, 
which lie a whole hemisphere apart, have sometimes 
seemed antagonistic they are intermediately con- 
nected; for science blends with philosophy; and phi- 
losophy blends with poetry and religion in a perfect 
whole, susceptible of systematic statement. 

Love is the uniting element of coincidence for all, 
for it is equally the substance of religion, the inspira- 



84 EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 

tion of poetry, and the inspiration of true and fertile 
philosophy. The pursuit of truth, modestly concealed 
as she is in the privacy of nature, is a lover's pursuit, 
in which " faint heart never won," and only an over- 
powering passion is a guarantee of success in the at- 
tainment of philosophy and propagation of reform. 
The greatest educational reform the world has seen 
was that of the poor school-master Pestalozzi, and he 
said of his great work, "All this was done by love 
which possesses divine power, if we are only true to 
the right and not afraid to carry the cross." When the 
Prussian Government sent twelve young men to 
Yverdon to study and learn the system of Pestalozzi, 
the Minister of Education said to them, " The object 
in sending you to Pestalozzi is not merely that you 
may study the external or formal part of this system, or 
to acquire skill in teaching, but that you may warm 
yourselves at the sacred fire which is glowing in the 
bosom of that man, who is full of power and love, that 
you may walk with a similar spirit in the path of truth, 
and in the observation of the laws of nature." 

Let me now be distinctly understood. The evolu- 
tion of genius depends upon two powers — originality 
and sentiment. Originality should be developed by the 
Original System of Education; sentiment should be de- 
veloped by the process of Moral Education heretofore 
explained. 

The central power of genius is a faculty difficult to 
name — a combination of Ehronesis, Euphrosyne, and 
Eusebia — for it is a principle of the new psychology 
that the highest inspiration is to be found in the 
highest reverence. It is difficult to name in English, 
unless we are content simply to call it genius. It is a 
faculty full of sentiment, full of originality and fancy, 
full of the intelligent conception of infinite possibili- 
ties, and prompt to recognize wonderful things as 
they appear, or to frame grand hypotheses of a nature 
so entirely in harmony with all of creation as to be 
readily recognized by the deepest thinkers. The 
movement of genius is not merely by a sudden leap, 
but by sustained upward and onward progress, im- 



EVOLUTION OF GENIUS. 85 

pelled by a lofty purpose and a delight in approach- 
ing the divine. 

The superior intellect of Erasmus was not compe- 
tent to the lofty career of Luther, for intellect alone has 
no high purpose, no sustaining and impelling power, 
no proper appreciation of the grand, the lovely, the 
good, or the divine. All these belong to the emotion- 
al nature, and the evolution of genius must therefore 
be found in the two forms of education heretofore ne- 
glected — Moral Education, which expands the soul, 
and Original Education, which plumes its wings 
for the highest and farthest flights. 



CHAPTER IV. 
ETHICAL CULTURE. 

Th-5 channels through which the mind is impressed— vision, audi- 
tion, and feeling. — Their locations in the brain. — The discovery 
of their locations. — Their relative importance. — The seat of ani- 
mal impulse. — Its control by development. — Power of mental 
impressions through the eye. — Personal influences — mater- 
nal, social, sexual. — Mutual influence of the sexes. — Necessity 
of co-education. — Treatment of convicts. — Self-government — 
it should pervade all education. — How to apply it. — Examples 
of University of Virginia and Illinois State University.— Will- 
ing obedience. — Corporal punishment. — Conscience work — 
essential in moral culture. — Ethical studies — intellect the 
guide of moral sentiment. — Self-study and self-correction. — 
Health — importance of physiological duties. — Disease can be 
avoided. — No escape from penalties of violated laws. — Red 
blood the basis of health. — Medical knowledge necessary to 
every teacher. — Every student should improve in health. — 
The chief basis of health is ethical or spiritual. — Falsehood of 
the fashionable. — Materialistic views of life taught in colleges. 
— Vitality which is spiritual governs and holds together the 
body and survives its destruction. — The decline of the body re- 
sisted by strengthening the soul. — The life of duty is the life of 
health. — A godlike life brings godlike health. 

The moral power of sound, conveying emotion, 
character, and intelligence, is the greatest of all edu- 
cational powers ; but does not occupy the whole of the 
educational channels. 

We have two great channels, perception and sensa- 
tion ; one for thought the other for feeling, emotion, 
and impulse — that is, through the perceptive channel, 
the eye, we obtain ideas ; through sensitive, nervous 
system we receive impressions which rouse emotion 
and impulse. 

If this division were simple, absolute, and complete, 
we should simply say educate intelligence through 
the eye, and educate character through the sensitive 
channels of which the ear is the most available. This 



ETHICAL CULTURE. 87 

would be the dogmatic statement if we should follow 
the usual example of doctrinaires who have a theory 
to enforce. 

But nature has no such simply, sharply, and hardly 
defined arrangements to correspond to the meagre- 
ness of our conceptions ; and while I would urge the 
importance of emotional, moral education through 
the sounds and physical feelings, which operate di- 
rectly on the emotions with irresistible power, I can- 
not, as a true anthropologist, overlook the fact that 
there are other influential, though less urgent and 
potent agencies than sound. The overmastering po- 
tency of sound comes from the fact that it is interme- 
diate between perception and sensation, and is compe- 
tent to move both thought and feeling in conjunction. 

The sensitive system occupies the anterior basis of 
the middle lobe of the brain, where it was discovered 
by myself in 1838 by comparison of the development 
of sensitive and insensitive persons, and was subse- 
quently demonstrated by many experiments on the 
living, in which the excitation of the basis of the mid- 
dle lobe developed abnormally great sensibility on the 
opposite side of the body. I need not now exercise 
any prudential reserve in mentioning this discovery 
in an educational work (which should avoid disputed 
theories in biology), since Prof. Ferrier's decisive ex- 
periment on the monkey has given absolute demon- 
stration of what I discovered and taught forty-four 
years ago, with fulness of detail and illustration, while 
the experiment on the monkey brain only confirms 
the essential proposition showing that sensibility must 
depend on that part of the brain in which I located it, 
since its destruction on one side paralyzes sensibility 
on the opposite side. 

In the subdivision of general sensibility I find that 
the most anterior part of the organ, adjacent to the 
location of language (as determined by my experiments 
and by innumerable pathological facts), is the seat of 
the sense of hearing, which is closely connected with 
language and music, and is as closely associated in 
the cerebral organs. Audition (which is both sensation 



88 ETHICAL CULTURE. 

and perception) is thus brought forward into close 
proximity to the organs of visual perception which lie 
along the brow, resting on the superorbital plate of 
bone which forms the vault of the sockets of the eye. 

Thus, while the sense of hearing rouses every sensi- 
tive fibre in the body by its association with the cen- 
tral apparatus of feeling, and by its connection with 
the medulla oblongata (through the auditory nerve), 
which is the central union of cerebral and corporeal 
apparatus, as well as by its close connection with the 
corpora striata, it also reaches through the adjacent 
organ of language, the whole intellectual apparatus 
of the front lobe, and controls the soul by the capture 
of all its channels of communication, as when in a 
song the words that occupy the intellect co-operate 
with the tones that move the emotions. 

The auditory region is therefore the commanding 
centre of conscious life for education, from which we 
go forward in the brain to the region of pure thought, 
isolated from feeling, impulse, desire, and power, 
which occupies the front lobe or forehead (the dome of 
thought), and go backward in the middle lobe 
through feeling into appetite, passion, and animal 
impulse. Anteriorly all is passionless and lucid ; pos- 
teriorly we find feeling (pleasure and pain), irritability, 
passion, and blind impulse. Thus physical feeling, 
posterior in the brain to audition, gives very little in- 
telligence, but rouses every emotion and passion. A 
blow or any species of physical torture rouses the 
wildest rage, while the caress of love, the soothing 
zephyrs, voluptuous warmth, and refreshing clothing 
produce delight and good humor, tranquillity, and 
love. The feeling connected with appetite responding 
to the stomach is equally potent, as we see in the fierce- 
ness of hunger, the moroseness of dyspepsia, and the 
good humor of the festal board and the succeeding 
hour of comfortable repletion. 

Going still farther back in the brain to the basis of 
the cerebrum, the cerebellum, medulla oblongata, and 
cerebral crura, we find no intellect whatever, and no 
channel of perception, but simply muscular impulses. 



ETHICAL CULTURE. 89 

Consequently this region is not available for any 
species of moral or intellectual instruction, though it 
is involved in education. The proper cultivation of 
this region gives physical power and development, 
but its excessive indulgence develops the animal at 
the expense of the moral and intellectual. Moral cul- 
ture consists not in sicppressing any of the animal 
energies of physical life, which has been the unfortu- 
nate error of religious fanatics in all ages, alike in 
Christian, Brahman, and Buddhist fanaticism ; but in 
the development of the higher moral and religious 
nature, which should stand upon a broad physical 
foundation to be efficient, and not upon the cramped, 
feeble and morbid foundation which fanaticism regards 
as its beau ideal w T hen it makes war upon a portion of 
the divine plan of humanity. A liberal education 
relies on development, where the old system relies on 
repression — repressing the animal nature by animal 
violence — as harshness — which leaves it bruised, bleed- 
ing, and rebellious, to come forth in greater violence 
when repression has ceased. Nothing but strong, posi- 
tive moral development can ever control the lower 
elements of character. 

Returning to the intellectual faculties, we perceive 
that although they do not move the emotional na- 
ture, pure thought being the minimum of. passive- 
ness, they are the channels for ideas which may be 
effective in moulding the character. 

The immense power of social influences comes as 
much through visual perception as through hearing. 
There is in the human mind a direct instantaneous 
perception of character and emotion in others through 
the eye as well as the ear. Through the eye we realize 
a courage which we must respect or fear, and a force 
of character expressed through the eye to which 
feebler natures must yield. Through the eye w r e re- 
alize the admirable attractiveness and loveliness of a 
woman before she has spoken, or the disgusting offen- 
siveness of a profligate drunkard, or the sinister mo- 
tives and impulses of a well-bred gentleman. This 
immediate psychometric perception brings to bear 



90 ETHICAL CULTURE. 

upon us the moral force of a superior nature as defi- 
nitely if not as forcibly as the voice, and in the re- 
marks addressed to us the intellect brings us a strong 
impression as well as the tones of the voice. Hence 
a large portion of our moral education is to be effected 
through the optic-intellectual as well as the aural 
emotional channel. This joint action is required in 
the moral education of social influences, conscience train- 
ing , ethical studies, and high holy development by spirit- 
ual power, combined with hygienic science and practice. 
Conspicuously important, though neglected in ethical 
training, are the 

SOCIAL INFLUENCES. 

Education demands those surroundings which are 
established by the wise order of nature, and which 
ought not to be removed or thwarted by the artificial 
schemes of men — the surroundings of, ist, maternal 
love; 2d, the family circle; and 3d, the circle of adoles- 
cence, in which the sexes become especially important 
and influential to each other. 

The infant needs the mother, the boy the family 
circle, and the adolescents the society of their own 
ages. It is a lamentable loss, when either of these 
necessary relations is disturbed. The infant pines 
and often dies for the want of maternal love, vitality 
and sympathy. The boy has an uncouth and morbid 
development without the family circle, and the young 
man or woman deprived of adolescent society grows 
up without symmetry in the moral nature. 

The co-education of the sexes is an essential part of 
any complete scheme of moral education. Their sep- 
aration is but a legacy of barbarism, due to the same 
spirit which imprisons woman in the harem or forbids 
her to be seen with an uncovered face. The barbar- 
ism (born of sensuality and pessimism) which regards 
the sexes as mutually dangerous and demoralizing, 
delights in pragmatic interference with the course of 
nature, and repression of natural impulses, which 
break out with volcanic irregularity when repressed. 

Man is essentially a social being; but the social at- 



ETHICAL CULTURE. 9 1 

traction between the sexes is tenfold stronger than 
any other attraction that holds society together in 
peace. That attraction, when it culminates in individ- 
ual love, dominates over the whole course of life, and 
develops the courtesies, loves, and duties which make 
the family sacred. Until thus concentrated in a home, 
it spreads all through the society of the young, form- 
ing an atmosphere of courtesy, reverence, tenderness, 
sympathy, admiration and love, in which all the virtues 
bloom as in the first flowering of summer. 

That is the brightest, sunniest portion of every life 
when sexual graces and attractions are first com- 
pletely realized. It is the period of romance and 
poetry, of hope and imaginative heroism, in which pure 
ideals and lofty aims or purposes in life are cherished. 

In the decade from 14 to 24, and sometimes several 
years earlier, the sexes have for each other a potency 
and a spell for which there is no substitution, to inter^ 
fere with which is an outrage on nature. As well 
might we disrupt all families, compelling husbands 
and wives to live far apart, as to disrupt the potential 
families of the young, whose love is only the more 
diffusive and beneficent because not yet crystallized 
in family ties. In its nebulous state it is as full of 
diffusive light and warmth as in its later forms. 

One of the most efficient means for the demoraliza- 
tion of society is to break up this Eden, separate the 
sexes, and send the young men to their rudely mascu- 
line associations, where turbulence, swearing, smoking, 
drinking, tussling, gaming and fighting are unchecked 
by any womanly, parental or professorial presence. 
The turbulence and demoralization of college life when 
not under the professor's eyes, checked only by the 
stock of virtue which the young men have brought 
from home, would be shocking if it were introduced 
by a new system of education, but old evils are ac- 
cepted as inevitable (like the filthy streets of some old 
cities) and cease to be offensive because so familiar.* 

* Harvard students have repeatedly been engaged in rows in 
Boston. The New Haven Palladium last year published an ac- 



9 2 ETHICAL CULTURE. 

The sexes mutually ennoble each other by stimu- 
lating that desire to please which represses all the 
evil passions, and this happy influence is so well dis- 
played in the schools and colleges of co-education as 
to have settled the question as to its beneficent in- 
fluence.* 

"Many competent judges (says the Westminster Review) are 
of opinion that the low tone of morality which unfortunately pre- 
vails among us is largely due to this unnatural custom of the en- 
tire separation of the sexes in school and university life." 

The convict in the penitentiary, as if society were 
determined on the destruction of his soul, is deprived 
of all these good influences. No kindness, no love, 
no sympathy, no companionship, nothing but enforced 
labor relieves his doom, and it is no wonder that he 
renews his crime when discharged, if he does not 
break down while confined. Nine convicts on one 
day, in April, 1881, were taken from the Massachusetts 
State prison to the Worcester Insane Asylum. How 
different will be the fate of our fallen brothers when 
we endeavor to save and heal them by the Divine 
panacea of love. 

One of the most desperate convicts in a Detroit 
prison, who had made repeated efforts to lead a rebel- 
lion, is said to have been entirely reformed and softened 
by a little incident that stirred his affections. A little 
girl among a visiting party asked him to help her up 

count of "a disgraceful fight, in which the students came off second 
best," which originated in a student's refusal to take off his hat 
when requested by a manager at a public dancing hall. Yet Yale 
is a Christian university. 

* Thomas Hughes, of England, in an address at Strathmore 
College said of co-education: ''I cannot help feeling that in the 
future, the chief education lies in this joint education. There has 
been one small experiment in our country by some ladies — Misses 
Lushington — and upon young men and boys the joint education 
has had a most humanizing effect. The boys were wonderfully 
more humane and gentle than they were at the ordinary schools of 
the country." 

At a recent international educational congress, at Brussels, there 
was a remarkable and general concurrence of sentiment in favor 
of co-education, 



ETHICAL CULTURE, 93 

stairs, promising a kiss in return, and afterwards asked 
him to kiss her too. He blushed and kissed her, and 
returned to his work with a tear in his eye and tender- 
ness in his soul, and gave no more trouble to the au- 
thorities. 

A similar tale is told by the Meadville, Pa., Re- 
porter. A young man with marks of dissipation in 
his face came begging for food at a city mansion, and 
received it in the kitchen. The lady's child followed 
her to the kitchen, and as the tramp saw r her coming 
in he dropped knife and fork, staring at the child, 
and crying, " Johnny, Johnny." He became agitated, 
and confessed himself an impostor. " Madam, I am 
not a workman; I am Jim Floyd, and I was discharged 
yesterday from Moyamensing prison, where I have 
served out a sentence for burglary. I was once a de- 
cent man. I left my wife and my old mother up in 
Pottsville, and my baby. Little one (he said, hold- 
ing out his hands with entreaty), shake hands with me, 
won't you ? I wouldn't hurt a hair of your head." The 
baby ran forward, smiling. With outstretched hand 
Jim kneeled down beside it, with tears in his eyes. 
"It's so like Johnny," he muttered. "You'll go back 
to Johnny and your wife and your old mother," said 
the lady. " It's too late to make a decent man of me," 
said Jim, and putting on his old cap he went out. 
But six months afterward the lady received an 
ill-spelled letter from Pottsville, in which Jim said: "I 
am at work here. That night I had planned to join 
the boys, but your little girl saved me. I came home 
instead. It wasn't too late." 

Every character is moulded by the social surround- 
ings, as a plant is developed by the sun and air. The 
chief moral education at present is the influence of 
woman, especially as the mother. Children not only 
imitate what they see, but catch the very tone and 
spirit of their associates, and are controlled by the 
public opinion of their surroundings.* 

* A little girl's doll, having tumbled from its seat in a toy car- 
riage, she broke out in imitation of her seniors: "Sit right up, you 



94 ETHICAL CULTURE, 

The evils of sexual exclusiveness in schools may be 
greatly relieved by having the teacher and the pupils 
of different sexes: a man for the instruction of girls and 
a lady for the instruction of young men and boys have 
a very beneficial effect. Co-education is especially nec- 
essary in America, for our colleges, in their republican 
simplicity if not poverty, often receive from very uncul- 
tivated families boorish young men, ignorant of social 
proprieties, and turn them out with very little improve- 
ment in bearing and manners; while wealthy English 
colleges, with their company of Fellows and Professors, 
stately buildings, monuments, dining-halls, relics of 
antiquity, ceremonial manners and social usages long 
established by the higher classes, give the manners 
and exterior of a gentleman. Co-education, however, 
will in time give a truer and more complete refine- 
ment to the American graduate. Co-education in- 
spires a sense of character and feeling of self-respect 
which tend to make the pupil a law to himself and re- 
lieve the burden of the teacher ; hence it prepares 
happily for another comparatively new feature of 
moral training which differs essentially from the old 
ideas. 

Self - Government. — Moral training which stops 
short of this is very incomplete indeed. The object 
of education is to qualify men to act wisely from their 
own impulses, when free from restraint. It cannot be 
attained solely by keeping them in tutelage. Unless 
the pupil has become sufficiently mature and upright 
to act wisely and well — unless the body of young men 
are capable of governing themselves, they are not fit 
to be discharged into society in that condition. 

The brilliant example of Fellenberg, at Hofwyl, 
assures us that young men may be brought into a 
much higher state of discipline than obtains gener- 
ally in society, in governments, or even perhaps in 
churches. 

horrid old thing! Don't you dare to do that again or I'll whip you." 
Then observing that a spectator had approached she assumed the 
company manners, saying gently, ' ' Now sit up straight, and be care- 
ful not to fall and hurt yourself." 



ETHICAL CULTURE, 95 

Self-government is not to be fully and suddenly de- 
veloped in the latter years of college life, when all the 
previous years have been either slavish or lawless. It 
should be introduced in the primary school as far as 
possible, and if boys of fourteen are not entirely com- 
petent to self-government after all their previous train- 
ing there must be some fault in the teacher or his 
system. 

Let the teacher begin by framing a set of rules for 
the deportment of his pupils. Let the rules be very 
few and very simple, so that their necessity and reason- 
ableness shall be apparent. Let him consult the en- 
tire school as to their adoption and modification, and 
secure their cordial assent. Those four or five rules 
would be a sufficient code of by-laws to begin with, and 
the decision upon cases of violation and the penalties 
could be an interesting exercise fof the whole school, 
or (if too young) for a jury of senior pupils. 

The propriety and necessity of all the rules should 
be well understood by every pupil, so that a strong 
public opinion in the school should be arrayed against 
their violation. The penalties should be such as cor- 
respond best to the laws of nature — such as seem nat- 
urally to follow the offence: for example, fighting and 
quarrelling should be punished by exclusion from the 
playground, and by the refusal of his comrades to as- 
sociate w r ith or speak to him until thoroughly repent- 
ant. Indolence should be punished by the loss of 
advantages which are to be gained only by industry; 
disobedience, by placing him under vigilant supervision 
and physical restraint, or by giving him a drilling in 
prompt obedience to orders; noisy deportment by se- 
clusion; uncleanly habits by subjecting him to frequent 
inspection or to washing; neglect of duty by loss of 
valuable privileges. 

Under this system the self-governing power of the 
pupils would continually increase, and they could be 
intrusted more and more with the formation and ad- 
ministration of the rules, until the young men became 
the actual governing power and the teacher act as a 
president, occasionally using a veto power or a pardon. 



96 ETHICAL CULTURE. 

The ease with which a governing public sentiment 
may be established in college is illustrated by what 
Bishop Dudley says of the University of Virginia, in 
which comparatively little effort is made for moral 
control. " Let me not fail to add that this same pub- 
lic opinion has developed and protected a moral tone 
in the University of Virginia, such as the police and 
espionage and rigid discipline, so called, of other in- 
stitutions have striven in vain to generate. I mean 
that in the University of Virginia, naught that w r as 
false or dishonorable could find its home. The stu- 
dents themselves could and did banish in scorn him 
who under any circumstances should tell a lie. The 
old-time deceit of a professor by his pupil elsewhere 
recognized as usual and legitimate is here unknown." 

That freedom and self-government are indispensa- 
ble to developing # a high-toned character is self-evi- 
dent to those who understand human nature. Gov- 
ernment by arbitrary force produces an abject and 
servile character. It is fatal to self-respect, to the 
sense of honor, and to high-toned ambition. The 
slave grows into an abject, puerile, treacherous, de- 
ceitful, and sneaking character. Treated like an ani- 
mal, controlled by the harness and the lash, man as- 
similates to the brute in his nature; but treated with 
respect, love and justice he attains the highest pos- 
sibilities of his soul. The only government which does 
not injure or degrade its subject is that which wins 
his admiration, reverence, confidence, and love. With- 
out these there is no moral development and no moral 
government. Moral government is the stimulus of 
moral development, and moral development renders 
moral government perfect. 

The practicability and expediency of self-govern- 
ment were so fully demonstrated in the school of Fel- 
lenberg that the failure of colleges for half a century 
to introduce, or even attempt to introduce this vast 
improvement is one of the most signal evidences that 
they are not yet emancipated from the stagnating 
influence of the dark ages — the power of automatic 
habit. 



ETHICAL CULTURE. 97 

The principle of self-government was introduced 
into the Illinois State University in 1870, which has 
recently had as many as 400 under-graduates. A con- 
stitution was prepared by the students, with the con- 
currence of the Regent, according to which, as subse- 
quently amended, the legislative power was vested in 
a Senate of twenty-one members, each holding office a 
year, the Regent and Faculty retaining a veto power. 
This elective senate enacts the laws or regulations 
which are enforced by fines of sums not exceeding 
five dollars, imposed by a court consisting of three 
judges and a marshal. A President, Vice-President, 
Secretary, and Treasurer are elected by the students, 
and the final enforcement of the laws rests in the 
power of the Faculty to suspend or expel the contu- 
macious. This system has been sustained by the sen- 
timents of the students, and has been in successful 
operation more than ten years. Under co-education 
its operation would be still more harmonious and suc- 
cessful. 

An admirable feature of the self-governing system 
has been developed in the Lasell Seminary for girls at 
Auburndale, Mass. If any student at the end of one 
term is regarded as deserving such trust, she is enrolled 
on the list of " self-governed" and is then permitted 
to do as she pleases, so long as she continues to show 
herself worthy of such confidence, which is the highest 
honor of the school. Under a proper ethical system, 
I feel assured that nearly all of the female students 
and a majority of the male might attain this honor. 

No system of rigid restraint and suppression by au- 
thority can teach men proper self-government. Ger- 
man youth are kept under a rigor of parental author- 
ity at home which would astonish American boys, yet 
when at college their drinking, fighting, and other 
habits show that repression does not permanently re- 
press. 

In true moral education the idea of government 
almost entirely disappears. Teacher and student are 
united in the desire to do right, and therefore there is 
no conflict of self-will and authority. The desire to 



98 ETHICAL CULTURE. 

do right is a desire to do as older and wiser minds 
suggest, and obedience is a positive pleasure. The New 
York Times admirably defined educational manage- 
ment by saying, " To influence the young to their 
being governed without their knowing it — by being 
at once of them, with them, and still above them — is 
the ideal type of successful management." 

In this view corporal punishment is a relic of bar- 
barism, and yet the Boston school reports say that 
" the number of reported corporal punishments dealt 
out to the boys in the grammar schools during 1879-80 
was 10,983, a number equal to84^-per cent of the aver- 
age number attending these schools." The committee 
also said, "they have no doubt that corporal punish- 
ment will be substantially done away with by ridding 
the schools of incompetent teachers." In New York, 
however, where corporal punishment is abolished, a 
late report of the superintendent says: "There are 
fewer dismissals from schools for misbehavior." 
" Kindness, as a rule, had greater influence in secur- 
ing discipline and respect than physical force." The 
new regulations for the elementary schools of France 
prohibit corporal punishment. The union of the sexes 
would render their moral self-government much more 
successful by the more amiable, thoughtful, and rever- 
ential tone of feeling which it would produce. 

The teacher, however, should not cease to be a vig- 
ilant and influential moral power. His influence will 
be especially necessary with new pupils who have not 
yet imbibed the spirit of the school, and with those 
who have had bad examples at home, or who have 
been sent to him because unmanageable elsewhere. 

With youth of favorable dispositions the self-gov- 
erning power of the school, the power of its public 
opinion and the joint influence of the sexes, animated 
by soul-moving song, would leave very little for the 
teacher's authority.* 

*At Hull, in Canada, a number of playful boys arranged a mock 
court in the corridor of an old school building, and arraigned one 
of their fellows on a charge of disorderly conduct. He was con- 



ETHICAL CULTURE. 99 

With the unfortunate classes, predisposed to indo- 
lence, disobedience, vice, and crime, the teacher must 
come in close contact with all his moral power, and 
train them in vigilant self-inspection and 

CONSCIENCE- WORK. 

Every day, preferably every evening before retiring, 
the teacher or parent should engage in a friendly con- 
fidential review with the pupil of his conduct through 
the day, winning his confidence and acting as his con- 
fessor — strengthening his good purposes, training him 
to judge of his own deportment, and sustaining him by 
approbation and praise in meritorious efforts. 

There is great power in this conscience exercise. It 
has been the chief reliance of Mr. Howe in the Ohio 
State Reform School, which has so successfully re- 
claimed the young convicts of that state. But it must 
be kind and sympathetic, like a mother's love — not 
for the purpose of censure and inquisitorial torture, 
but to rouse moral reflection and confirm good reso- 
lutions — to give the moral support of a vigilant and 
intimate friend, in whose presence shame would 
check unworthy thoughts or deeds. 

Such an exercise should be daily with pupils that 
need it, and should be a weekly exercise with all. It 
will greatly strengthen the moral control of the teacher, 
and increase his friendship and intimacy with his 
pupils and his knowledge of their exact moral status. 
A teacher endowed with psychometric penetration 
would so thoroughly realize the exact status of the 
pupil's mind and character as to be able to direct his 
attention skilfully to his own peculiarities and to show 
him how he would be benefited by a higher standard 
of character. 



demned to pay a fine of $2.50 or He 15 days in jail. The chief of 
police, however, appeared on the scene, arrested the culprit and 
carried him before the Recorder, who enforced the judgment of the 
boys. 



100 ETHICAL CULTURE. 



ETHICAL STUDIES. 



Of a similar character is the influence of ethical 
studies. 

Of course virtues are not acquired by merely read- 
ing essays or hearing lectures upon them, but moral 
instruction is a necessary part of our course of moral 
training. Feelings are not always competent guides 
to conduct. They give our moral nature its strength, 
but not its wisest capacities. The rude strength of 
the untrained man does not enable him to succeed as 
a swordsman or as an artizan, and the rude energy of 
the moral nature is liable to many unfortunate blun- 
ders if not well disciplined in connection with intel- 
lect. We are apt to think that entirely right which 
society approves, and to feel that we are entirely right 
in anything prompted by our passions. 

Sentiments which are not disciplined into habitual 
activity are apt to become dormant, and if not properly 
enlightened they defeat their own aims, as we have 
seen all over the world in the misdirection of the re- 
ligious sentiments, in superstitions, cruel customs, and 
fierce intolerance. 

Conscientiousness or the sentiment of duty desires 
to be shown what is right and what is wrong. The 
moral sense is therefore intimately connected with the 
reasoning intellect which it stimulates, and is so much 
influenced or guided by it as to have led many specu- 
lators to suppose that the whole moral nature was the 
product of education. The falsity of the theory, how- 
ever, is easily seen when we reflect on the uncontrol- 
lable power of the emotions, the sense of duty which 
leads the martyr to die by fire, the love which makes 
the mother sacrifice her life to her child or to her hus- 
band. Love operates independent of education, not 
only in all human races but throughout the animal 
kingdom generally. The maternal love of birds even 
of fierce, carnivorous species, and even of some species 
of fishes, is stronger than any quality depending on 
education. 

There is no doubt, however, that education may revo- 



ETHICAL CULTURE. IOI 

lutionize the practical manifestations of character 
by changing the direction in which our sentiments 
operate, and leading us into true or false views of 
life. We may be taught, like Calvin, to consider it the 
highest duty to sanction the burning of Servetus, or 
to engage at the command of king or priest in the 
wicked wars which have so often desolated civilized 
nations. 

The function of the moral instructor is to show the 
good or ill effects of human conduct in all its varieties, 
in its permanent as well as transient influence. 

The ethical instructor should describe and explain 
the nature of all the virtues, illustrating their opera- 
tion in daily life with the aid of anecdotes and bio- 
graphical sketches. His descriptions should be not 
only graphic in detail and philosophic in analysis, but 
eloquent in expression. 

The pupil should be exercised in criticising his own 
conformity to duty, but not in criticising or censuring 
others. 

The idea should be firmly and frequently impressed 
upon him that he must look for the causes of his success 
or failure to his own ?nerits and demerits instead of find- 
ing fault with the world. 

In the game of life it is his duty to aim at success, and if 
he fails he should review his course to see hozv he might have 
succeeded, and look at the lives of others to see how they 
won success. Whether he be sick or poor, unpopular, 
friendless or unlucky, in any way, he should bravely 
face the facts and see how he might have won health, 
prosperity, and reputation by a wiser course. Possibly 
he may come to the conclusion that his native powers 
are not sufficient to achieve any very great success and 
thus learn to be content in his natural sphere. But 
if well instructed, he will perceive that health and a 
considerable degree of happiness and success are 
within the reach of all who act wisely or in conformity ff 
to law, and his teacher perceiving his capacities will 
encourage him to attain all that is possible. 



102 ETHICAL CULTURE. 



HEALTH. 



A proper course of ethical instruction will not fail 
to emphasize the physiological duties — the duty of 
attaining as perfect health as possible — the means of 
performing all other duties. 

This duty has been heretofore generally ignored, 
and health regarded either as a mysterious dispensa- 
tion of an inscrutable providence or a matter of acci- 
dent beyond human control. 

But in truth the preservation of health demands 
only an enlightened vigilance. He who at twenty- 
one years of age does not know the effects of all vari- 
ations of diet upon his health better than any phy- 
sician can tell him has been a very idle or careless 
observer. 

He who does not realize the effects of a prolonged 
chill, of oppressive heat, of debilitating malaria, of 
personal uncleanliness, of excesses and irregularities, 
of draughts of cold air, of ill-ventilated apartments, 
of overwork, of sedentary habits, and of prolonged 
idleness, and endeavor to avoid such evils, is criminally 
negligent and is inevitably punished for his defiance 
of the laws of nature. 

Disease is not an enemy that strikes us like a can- 
non-ball, suddenly and inevitably. It is an evil com- 
panion that becomes fastened upon us only after we 
have dallied too long in his company, and this dalli- 
ance is our crime. To eat what we know is unwhole- 
some to us, to sit in the draught which we know may 
produce a cold, to prolong our work when our strength 
has been exhausted, to sacrifice our needed rest, and to 
permit ourselves to become gradually (for all these 
troubles come on gradually) dyspeptic, rheumatic, 
consumptive, feverish, constipated, bloodless, and 
feeble, without an effort to throw off the malign con- 
dition is a crime. The Divine law makes it a crime 
for which there is no immediate pardon. Physiolog- 
ical crimes and pathological punishments inevitably 
go together, and all we can do is to moderate the du- 
ration of the punishment by a prompt return to duty. 



ETHICAL CULTURE. 103 

It is not claimed that every one knows by intuition 
what to do in all cases of slight disorder. Medical 
advice is often necessary, and is generally successful 
if taken at the very incipiency of any disease. But 
it is the duty of every individual as far as possible to 
live above the need of medicine — to attain that mus- 
cular development, that expansion of the lungs, and 
that abundance of red blood which render him com- 
paratively insusceptible to the influence of any slight 
cause of disease. 

An abundant supply of healthy, red blood is the 
chief basis of health, and in proportion as the red ele- 
ments of the blood diminish the vital power declines, 
and the attacks of disease are invited. Tuberculous 
consumption, the leading disease in the bill of mortal- 
ity everywhere, never occurs where the blood has been 
maintained at the healthy standard. (When the red 
corpuscles amount to one-eighth.) 

A liberal, wholesome diet,* an active life, and, per- 
haps, a little iron and hypophosphites, with a few mild 
aperients and tonics occasionally, will produce this 
abundance of blood upon which health mainly depends. 

The teacher should explain the rules of health and 
the use of a few simple remedies for slight disorders, 
and should require of each pupil to be as well pre- 
pared in health every day as he is in the knowledge of 
his text-book theme. He should be taught to consider 
every slight disorder of health and disqualification for 
duty as discreditable as a failure in any other require- 
ment of his studies and his morals. 

Hence the teacher should have a medical education, 

* One of the most pernicious fanaticisms of the day is that 
physiological puritanism or asceticism which regards ultra temper- 
ance or abstinence in food as a source of health, when in reality 
it is often a cause of slow decline, nervous diseases, general debil- 
ity, chronic disorders, and consumption. Health requires abun- 
dant nourishment, followed by the abundant activity which insures 
deep respiration, purines the blood, and animates the secretions. 
Defective nourishment leaves the blood development below its 
normal condition, producing that debility and irritable excitability 
which are the general preliminary of all diseases. Such debility 
lowers all the moral powers and facilitates all wrong-doing. 



104 ETHICAL CULTURE. 

at least to the extent of understanding hygiene and 
the domestic treatment of slight disorders. Indeed 
all classes should have that amount of knowledge. 
Hygiene and a general knowledge of therapeutics are 
indispensable to a liberal education, and when taught 
they should be accompanied by imperative moral les- 
sons as to the duty of obeying hygienic laws and the 
disastrous effects of their criminal neglect. 

When we have education as it should be, the teacher 
will watch closely the physical education of every pu- 
pil, and not be satisfied until every one is brought up 
to the highest efficiency and health. Why should we 
have mental culture at the expense of the body in lit- 
erary schools,* and bodily culture only in the schools 
of pugilism ? Why should not every school give vigi- 
lant attention to the robust attainments of the gymna- 
sium and play-ground, which furnish the physical 
basis of a career ? Diet and exercises, electricity and 
baths have such a developing power that parents should 
not be satisfied without witnessing a marked improve- 
ment in the physical condition, power, and vital per- 
fection of every student. 

All these things must be recognized as indispens- 
able elements in moral education. Physical perfec- 
tion sustains moral power and perfection, and is a 
treasury of wealth. The trustee of an estate has as 
little right to waste it and reduce it to bankruptcy as 
the teacher to send forth a pupil bankrupt or impaired 
in health. 

Our healthy bodies as well as our inherited or accu- 
mulated estates are sacred trusts for mankind — for 
those whom we call our brethren; and when young 

* A committee of the Elmira Board of Education reported that, 
in its opinion, " if all the mere physical ills which grow out of 
competition for prizes and class honors, including a wide-spread 
spirit of emulation, could be revealed to the scrutiny of school- 
boards as they are exhibited to medical men, in the forms of 
impaired appetite, indigestion, headache, sleeplessness, impoverish- 
ment of the blood, etc., the system which festers and encourages 
such unnatural exercise of mind and body among young, undevel- 
oped, and growing children would yield to a more rational method 
of education." 



ETHICAL CULTURE. IO$ 

men are rightly educated they will frown indignantly 
upon the profligate excesses that undermine health, 
and the profligate ostentation that squanders the 
wealth for want of which millions are sunk in igno- 
rance and suffering. 

I trust these ideas are not unfamiliar to enlight- 
ened teachers and parents; but I must go much farther 
and affirm, as the result of my deepest studies of an- 
thropology, that the ethical nature, and not the chem- 
ical or mechanical processes studied in medical 
schools, is the true basis and source of health, and this 
great truth is destined to revolutionize our system of 
hygiene and education. 

I am profoundly convinced by physiological studies 
and experimental investigations which began forty- 
seven years ago, that our collegiate doctrines of phys- 
iology embrace fundamental falsehoods, because they 
have studied man in one aspect alone, and that the 
lowest. They have studied him simply as a machine, 
moved by mysterious combined forces belonging to 
the domain of chemistry, and not as a living being. 
They look at the body, which is a temporary organ- 
ism, held together by vital power, but continually de- 
caying, wearing out, and destined to destruction as 
soon as that vital power leaves it. They blindly ig- 
nore that vital power (because it is invisible and in- 
tangible) which develops that body from a simple 
cell into a predestined career, and which, having ex- 
hausted the uses and purposes of that organism, hav- 
ing worn it out in service beyond repair, abandons it 
to decomposition, carrying off in perfection all that 
animated, organized, perfected, and controlled that 
power — the life which is eternal, and which exists in 
far higher perfection when disassociated from the 
body than it could ever manifest in the physical form. 

Our blind physical scientists find no evidence of life 
as an entity in the body, or of its grand career when 
it ascends from the body; and even religious history 
fails to make them realize what a thousand facts are 
daily demonstrating all around them, and it would be 
needless for me to offer them any evidence upon a 



106 ETHICAL CULTURE. 

question which in their blindness they think they have 
disposed of; but to those who are not afflicted with 
this fashionable myopia of the schools I would say 
that as the soul, which is life, and which determines 
the oi%anic forms that it temporarily occupies, has in 
itself eternal life, not subject to disease and destruction, 
man on this globe is also exempt from disease in pro- 
portion as he is developed in soul-life — in proportion 
as his nobler nature is perfected and dominates over 
the chemical and mechanical conditions of the organ- 
ized body, imparting thereto a portion of its own 
noble and durable nature. In other words, the more 
highly we are developed in that soul-power called 
will which commands the body, and which is sustained 
and reenforced by all the lofty principles and purposes 
of duty or religion, in which the soul of man corre- 
lates with the infinite oversoul of Divinity, the greater 
is the organizing, controlling, and independent power 
of that eternal life in us which resists disease and 
makes the body a perfect instrument for its best pur- 
poses. The true hygiene is based upon the true phys- 
iology. Life comes from above, as philosophy and 
religion teach (and as my experiments demonstrate), 
or it comes from below as medical scholars and phys- 
ical scientists teach. It comes from the spiritual realm 
of eternal life, or from the material realm of eternal 
death, by some unknown law of bioplasmic organiza- 
tion and development never yet proved. 

If the former be true, ethical culture, or soul-develop- 
ment, must be our chief reliance for universal health. 
If the latter, we must look to the predominance of mat- 
ter, of bone and muscle — the full development of man 
as an animal. Experience has already decided which 
is practically true. The statistical report of Mr. Fin- 
laison on Friendly Societies, printed by order of the 
House of Commons in 1853, arrives at the conclusion 
from statistics that " the practical difference in the 
distribution of sickness seems to turn upon the amount 
of expenditure of physical force. The quantum of 
sickness annually falling to the lot of man is in direct 
proportion to the demands upon his muscular power." 



ETHICAL CULTURE. \OJ 

Hence it is that assurance offices find that female an- 
nuitants are longer lived than male, and vital statistics 
show that males have a greater mortality than females. 
According to Farr's English life-table the fem^e ex- 
pectation of life is greater by two years in mrancy 
and continues superior, being at the age of seventy 
still six months greater. In contrast with the longev- 
ity produced by the more ethical and tranquil life of 
woman, we should find, if statistics were collected, the 
short duration of life among the debased and criminal 
classes. We know by Neison's Vital Statistics that 
life among the intemperate is less than half the aver- 
age of the entire community. 

Of all human pursuits not ranked as criminal, the 
military life is the farthest from divine law, and con- 
sequently farthest from the law of health. " Statistics 
tell us that soldiers, though picked men, living in costly 
barracks in Britain during peace, are nearly as un- 
healthy as the people of our unhealthiest cities, and 
sometimes almost twice as unhealthy. The mortality 
at all ages in the army at home is almost double that of 
civilians, age being alike." — Chambers' s Cyclopaedia. 

Universal experience shows that culture in the di- 
rection of soul brings man nearer to the eternal, spir- 
itual life of health, serenity, and happiness, while 
culture in the animal or physical direction (beyond 
what is necessary to the equilibrium of the spiritual and 
physical) results in degradation, disease and death. 
Pedestrian matches and rowing matches are danger- 
ous to health. The moral and physiological degrada- 
tion resulting from excessive cultivation of the muscles 
was graphically and forcibly portrayed by Wilkie 
Collins in his interesting fiction, " Man and Wife." 
The scientific comprehension of this question requires 
familiarity with that anthropology, unknown in col- 
leges, which comprehends the joint operation of soul 
and body. 

The paramount law of hygiene, therefore — more im- 
portant than any other law — is that we should resist 
disease and degradation of the body by strengthening 
its eternal life; and that is to be strengthened only by 



108 ETHICAL CULTURE, 

living on the high plane of duty — the life of divine 
love and heroic service — as Christ, the noblest model, 
1 i ved, whose perfect health not only filled his own frame, 
but iruits superabundance poured forth on all whom 
he touched, or even looked at, himself being continu- 
ally filled from divine source; for in the higher soul- 
realm there is an eternal radiance which develops 
and uplifts all who approach. 

The practical lesson from this divine philosophy is 
that the life of perfect duty is the life of perfect health, 
and that in proportion as the principles of ethical ed- 
ucation, to which this work is devoted, shall be 
adopted by mankind the reign of epidemics will cease, 
and the labors of the medical profession will become 
an insignificant element in our social condition. 

It is even believed by many at present that with 
sanitary science to abolish malaria, and with hygienic 
instruction and physical culture to enforce the laws 
of health, the demand for drugs will almost cease; but 
it would be Utopian to expect so great a change by 
looking to material measures alone. Men and women 
will continue to be sick and to use medicines in the 
purest atmosphere, and under the most perfect dietetic 
systems, until they reorganize the human constitution 
by elevating its spiritual power, lifting it above the 
plane of delicacy, sensuousnes, appetite, passion, 
selfishness, anger, melancholy, jealousy, and despair 
to the higher plane of heroism, fortitude, serenity, 
hope, faith, enthusiasm, and love, where godlike life 
will develop godlike health. 

This is not a mere hope or hypothesis, or a mere 
philosophic doctrine; it is a truth which has in every 
age been verified by saintly heroes, and is now being 
verified in the cure of the intemperance of hopeless 
drunkards, in the reformation of abandoned criminals, 
in the healing by prayer of those for whom physicians 
could do nothing, while the converse is demonstrated 
in armies, in criminal careers, and in the social tur- 
moil of unbridled selfishness, from which we see no 
escape but by moral education. 



CHAPTER V. 
ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 

Character of the teacher. — Importance of cultivating reverence and 
modesty. — Study of the pupil. — Honors and rewards. — Punish- 
ment contrary to ethics. — Love for the erring a duty. — Restraint 
and kindness. — Power of kindness over animals. — Censure and 
disgrace injurious. — Importance of music. — Vast difference of 
ethical and animal music. — Its hygienic and moral benefit. — 
Music without soul or moral power. — Cultivation of manners. 
— Examples of English, Italian, and Japanese. — Social influ- 
ences. — Influence of the departed. — The great and good in 
history. — Biographical reading and choice literature. — The 
low and frivolous tone of society. — Elevated aims of moral 
education. — Economy one of our greatest duties. — Essential to 
national welfare. — Criminality of governmental waste. — Tor- 
por of the public conscience on this subject. — Kindness to 
animals. — Enormous amount of cruelty in vogue. — The Ger- 
man view. — Kindness at home. — The happy family. — Code of 
manners and intercourse of the sexes. 

It has not been my purpose to present a complete 
code of ethics and ethical instruction, but I have been 
led to comment on erroneous methods and necessary 
reforms, and especially upon the transitional methods 
required with those who are not yet controlled by the 
lovely spirit of song, and the social atmosphere it 
produces. 

Following this line of thought there are several 
topics demanding attention, relating to methods of 
control, manners and sentiments and educational 
aims. 

An essential requisite of moral education is that it 
shall begin in the teacher — in his large, loving nature 
giving him a desire to teach instead of imposing task- 
work on his pupils. With the impulse of love he goes 
direct to his pupils, pours out his knowledge in oral in- 
struction, in visible illustrations, and watches the devel- 



IIO ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 

oped interest, the ready comprehension on their part, 
stirring up their minds by direct appeals, questions, 
and conversation, until they are all inspired with his 
enthusiasm and happiness. The true teacher cannot 
tolerate a dull, indifferent, or dissatisfied class of 
students; he will vary his methods until he has found 
the perfect charm that carries them along with him 
and makes them love him. This changes the old style 
school from a purgatory to a paradise, and something 
of this sort has been in a degree realized at Quincy, 
Massachusetts, where the school committee discovered 
that the system in use was " all smatter, veneering 
and cram," and this mechanical task-work system was 
superseded by bringing in a live teacher who made their 
lessons interesting and never prolonged any exercise 
to fatigue, but alternated with recreation. This vital- 
izing method proved not only more healthful and 
progressive, but actually cheaper — the annual cost per 
pupil bein^; reduced from $19.25 to $15.68, and "the 
Quincy experiment" has become famous. 

The first requisite for successful educational work 
is the establishment of the sentiment of Reverence. 
The familiarities of home are detrimental to this senti- 
ment, not that familiarity always " breeds contempt," 
but certainly it diminishes the power of reverence. 
As the church and the tribunal of justice are arranged 
to appeal to this sentiment, enforcing deference and 
silence, so should the school-room be, in the dignity of 
its appointments and the unanimous deference to the 
teacher. The reverential sentiment subdues the animal 
nature while it exalts the moral and intellectual, open- 
ing the mind to all good impressions. The reverence 
of the pupil must be maintained by the dignity of the 
teacher, his calm and courteous deportment, his su- 
perior intelligence, and his unquestionable authority. 
Abruptness, harshness, and scolding are not compati- 
ble with this sentiment, nor does it admit of loud and 
boisterous manners. Courtesy and gentleness of man- 
ner should be uniformly practised and enforced, and 
the habit of loud talking strictly repressed. 

A pupil in whom the reverential sentiment is de- 



ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. Ill 

ficient should be removed from scenes of turbulence ; 
should be subjected to the discipline of modesty and 
silence; should be made to realize his own ignorance, 
and ask assistance from equals or seniors. But above 
all he should be treated with extreme respect and po- 
liteness and required to observe the forms of extreme 
courtesy, for violations of which he should be subjected 
not to corporal punishment, but to confinement, from 
which he might be relieved after singing with a com- 
panion or assistant teacher in a sincere and earnest 
manner. The beneficial effect of punishment is pro- 
portioned to the calm and amiable spirit in which it is 
endured, and the irresistible power which compels 
submission. The possibility of successful rebellion is 
a strong temptation. 

Reverence is often extremely deficient in American 
society. Children are oftenb rought to the table or 
into the parlor and allowed to talk in a noisy, reckless 
manner, as if entirely unconscious of the presence of 
their seniors. Silence, modesty, and courtesy should 
be enforced, to permit the growth of reverence. The 
Spartans 'gave their youth thorough training in- rever- 
ence and modesty, as well as heroism; the gravity and 
modesty of their deportment would make an extreme 
contrast to what we often see in American youth. 

Reverence is cultivated by religious songs and 
prayers, by the practice of courtesy in manners, and by 
exercises in which the attempt is made to obey the 
word of command as in the drill of soldiers. Not 
only the school exercises, but the sports and games of 
children may be controlled equally by drill. 

To command reverence the teacher should be pre- 
eminently worthy of respect by the dignity of his per- 
sonal appearance, force of character, and superiority 
of manner and of knowledge. In addition to this he 
should be a practical anthropologist. All his knowl- 
edge of books gives but a morbid, one-sided develop- 
ment of his powers unless he understands the great 
book of human nature. The man described by Mil- 
ton — 

M Deep versed in books, but shallow in himself" — 



112 ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 

is no more fit for teaching than a theoretical surgeon 
unacquainted with anatomy for a capital operation. 
That psychometric power which penetrates and ap- 
preciates character is a primitive faculty independent 
of education and enables some to penetrate the 
very thoughts of one on whom they fix their eyes. 
The teacher endowed with this power is working in 
the light; without it he is working in darkness. 
The mind-reading power is not an abnormal or anoma- 
lous endowment, but a power exercised in some degree 
by all mankind, and even by animals (especially the 
dog); but exercised through the eye when we read 
instantly the sentiment or purpose of the face on 
which we gaze, and take in the whole height, breadth, 
and depth of the character. Nearly all great and suc- 
cessful men possess this power of judging character 
in a high degree, and are successful in following their 
first impressions. 

The firm and dignified bearing of the teacher, the 
established habit of prompt obedience to his com- 
mands, and the soul-swaying power of song soon be- 
come the sole reliance for moral control; but there are 
other means in honors, rewards, and punishments, 
which are often useful. 

The effort to gain distinction or honor, to be 
appreciated and honored, is entirely proper. But 
where emulation involves rivalry, and the success of 
one is gained by the failure or discredit of another, 
being merely a comparative success, we introduce an 
evil element, — the spirit of conquest, domination, and 
jealousy. Honor which is gained not only by our own 
merit, but by the demerit of others, which places them 
behind us, is apt to elicit a selfish feeling. 

Honors and rewards, therefore, should be for posi- 
tive and not comparative merit, and given to all who 
have attained the proper standard of merit. 

A judicious use of badges and medals for the best 
pupils will add a powerful stimulus to their ex- 
ertions. Such badges as honor, gentlemanly deport- 
ment, fidelity, scholarship, neatness, punctuality, per- 
severance, manliness, politeness, etc., might be used to 



ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 113 

reward these virtues, while historian, mathematician, 
naturalist, linguist, orator, writer, chemist, geographer, 
etc., might be used to reward intellectual proficiency. 

This recognition of merit is but just and proper ap- 
preciation. It should be shown not only by medals 
and badges, but by public commendation. The pupil 
is really entitled to receive it, and is stimulated by it 
to higher self-respect and honorable ambition, while 
the hearty recognition of merit exerts a happy influ- 
ence upon the young in teaching them to honor and 
respect virtue and intelligence wherever they see them 
instead of limiting their admiration to elegant cloth- 
ing, or to physical prowess. There is a great differ- 
ence between the moral tone of a school in which 
moral and intellectual superiority are admired and 
sought, and of one in which boxing and baseball alone 
are matters of pride. 

The influence of such rewards and honors is much 
more powerful with girls, and the moral sensibility 
of a school to such motives is greatly increased by the 
presence of female pupils, 

It may not be necessary or desirable in a well-dis- 
ciplined school to use these powerful stimulants at all. 
They should be brought up as a reserved force when- 
ever the evil propensities offer a prolonged resistance 
to the good, or when more vigorous incentives ^re 
needed to animate their intellectual life. But shall 
we punish ? 

Punishment is the spontaneous reaction of our own 
bad passions against the assaults from others. It is 
the injury inflicted by an animal upon its assailants 
by which it repels their pursuit and prevents their fu- 
ture assaults. There is a feeling in punishment that 
we have a right to inflict it — that it is not only a nec- 
essary protection to ourselves, but something that is 
merited by the criminal or enemy; that its infliction is 
a right of which we must not be deprived. 

Whether this sentiment emanates from justice (or 
conscientiousness), or is simply the inspiration of a 
spirit of revenge which is apt to claim its gratification 
as a right, is an interesting question. Perhaps the 



114 ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 

two elements combine in the desire of inflicting pun- 
ishment, which prevails among men of strong pas- 
sions. The revengeful impulse is greatly strengthened 
by systems of theology which represent God as de- 
lighting in vindictive punishment. 

When justice or conscientiousness is guided by love 
and wisdom instead of the malignant passions it 
comes to different conclusions. It does not hate the 
criminal and " nurse its wrath to keep it warm/' It 
regards the criminal as the parent regards an unfortu- 
nate child — as the victim of an evil destiny, of an in- 
herited depravity, or of an accumulated force of evil 
education and example, whom it would not be more 
rational to hate than to hate a drunkard or a lunatic. 
However debased, he is our brother still. 

When a father consigns his child to the care of a 
depraved family, where beastliness, drunkenness, theft, 
murder are its daily examples, we should feel as ten- 
derly for that unfortunate child as for its brother 
who, with no better original character, has been pre- 
served in the path of rectitude. One is a lovely and 
the other a repulsive object, but he is a shallow 
thinker who cannot look beyond the attractiveness or 
repulsiveness of the individual to the essential rights 
of the human soul — its claim upon our sympathy, 
love, and assistance, which is not forfeited either when 
the man becomes a hideous mass of disease, or when 
his soul is poisoned into a mass of moral deformity. 
The very fact that a child has been morally ruined by 
depraved associations gives him as urgent a claim 
upon us for his restoration as if he had been made 
hideous by the contagion of confluent small-pox. 
True, in the latter case he would not be morally re- 
pulsive; but as charity can overcome the physical re- 
pulsiveness of confluent small-pox to do its duty, 
surely it might also overcome the moral repulsiveness 
of a criminal in whom we can always discover some 
glimpses of original goodness, and who, in the great 
majority of cases, as shown by the experience of pris- 
ons and reformatories, can be restored to upright- 
ness by persevering moral education, Even the train- 



ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING, 1 15 

ing of two or three years has generally been sufficient 
for the regeneration of the young. 

The vindictive sentiment which comes in and clam- 
orously asserts that justice requires the punishment of 
the criminal, and is basely defrauded when he is 
kindly educated into virtue, is the fierce inspiration of 
the malignant passions, which are themselves the es- 
sence of crime, and which are roused into action by 
the aggressions of the criminal. He who cannot look 
upon criminals of any grade with the sentiment 
" Father, forgive them, they know not what they do" 
has not yet learned the chief lesson of ethics. The 
criminal and his victim are both objects of compas- 
sion, and the compassion for the criminal is greater 
as his misfortune is greater, involving his soul and ex- 
tending its calamitous effects beyond the present life. 

True, it is right to defend ourselves by violence 
against the criminal, because it is a necessity; but he 
is a poor thinker whose judgment becomes entangled 
in the meshes of passion and cannot see that the crim- 
inal is the victim of an adverse fate (which might 
have overtaken himself), whose reclamation calls for 
our help as loudly as the spectacle of a drowning 
man. If we cannot control him we may be compelled 
to fight him for the protection of ourselves and others; 
but whenever we have physical power to control him 
and do not proceed to his redemption we become crim- 
inals ourselves. The state which punishes instead of 
reforming its criminals is a criminal itself or a victim 
of the contagion of crime — for all crimes are conta- 
gious. The knave tempts other men to tricks and 
treachery to circumvent him, and the homicide makes 
homicides of others who are tempted to kill him in 
advance. Thus the mob hangs the murderer, and gov- 
ernments have only of late risen a little above this 
animal contagion of crime and begun to think serious- 
ly of reformation instead of torture. 

With these views we cannot tolerate punishment as 
proper in schools. Resentment has no place in moral 
education. How to overcome this resentment is a 
great moral lesson, of which the teacher himself is 



Il6 ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 

very often in need, educated as he has been under the 
vindictive system, and not realizing that evil can be 
conquered only by its opposite. 

Criminal propensities must be repressed by substi- 
tution of something better, as weeds are kept out by 
a compact greensward or by the overshadowing growth 
of the forest. The intense activity of the intellect under 
instruction, and of the loving sentiments under the 
inspiration of song, exclude the evil passions as effect- 
ually as the gentler emotions are excluded by the 
exercises of the prize-ring. 

If the violent passions of a pupil are still uncon- 
trollable, which would be a rare and extraordinary 
case, there should be a physical restraint adopted, ac- 
companied by kind and respectful treatment suffi- 
ciently overwhelming to remove all idea of resistance 
and to keep his passions in enforced tranquillity. 
Solitary confinement or the straight jacket should be 
used, while a kind and friendly bearing in all who 
come into contact with the culprit should show that 
they sympathize with him and prevent his indulging 
in anger. The kindest attention should be given to 
all his little wants, and the moral influence of song 
and conversation should animate his better sentiments 
while under physical restraint, until his hearty repent- 
ance and pledges of reformation justify his release, 
when he should be received with the embrace of love 
to assure him that he is restored and encourage him 
in self-respect and virtuous resolutions. Penalty and 
kindness might be combined in the treatment of the 
most vicious and unmanageable. If addicted to 
quarrelsome pugnacity he might be isolated, and after 
a time a companion sent to sing and relieve his loneli- 
ness. If his arms were pinioned by his side his com- 
panions or teachers might show their kindness in 
feeding and serving him. But all should be done in 
kindly courtesy, avoiding all unnecessary censure or 
coldness of manner. 

To counteract an evil propensity we should take 
away the opportunity for its exercise. When the evil 
passion is curbed by an impossibility it quietly sur- 






ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 117 

renders. If a boy is disposed to domineer over his in- 
feriors or juniors confine him to the society of his 
seniors and the evil propensity must die out. If he is 
disposed to be gluttonous give him very plain, coarse, 
wholesome food and he will become temperate, or 
let him take his lunch in his hand and eat as he is 
walking about or playing and he will be sure not to eat 
to excess. If he is disposed to be noisy and turbulent 
place him in a hall of silence, a school-room or church. 
If he is disposed to resist authority let him perceive 
that the authority is so strong that resistance would 
be in vain. The evil propensity should be conquered 
not by a struggle, but by crushing it under impos- 
sibility. An ingenious gentleman has controlled a 
balky horse very quietly by a simple device — merely 
dismounting when he stopped and drawing up one of 
his forefeet by a strap, leaving him to stand on three 
feet until he realized his helplessness and became will- 
ing to move when released. 

In many cases w T here punishment would seem neces- 
sary kindness dispels the evil inclinations and renders 
it unnecessary. As all intellectual beings are gov- 
erned by the same psychic laws, the education of 
animals throws much light on the education of man. 
It has often been proved that animals are educated by 
kindness to the best development of their powers. 
Even the milch cow illustrates the value of kindness. 
Mr, Willard in his book on butter says: 

"It is really astonishing what a large difference in the yield of 
milk it makes by attending properly to a number of small things 
in the management of stock, and withal preserving a uniform 
kindness and gentleness of treatment throughout every operation 
— a gentleness extended even to the tones of the voice. Generally 
speaking, the cow will do her best that is loved the best and petted 
the most by those who have her in charge. If you wish a cow to 
do her best you must cultivate her acquaintance intimately and 
be unsparing in little acts of kindness." 

One of the most high-tempered and ungovernable 
horses of America, the mare Maud S., w r as success- 
fully managed by kindness. Mr. S. F. Harris says in 
Wallace's Monthly: 



Il8 ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 

She is wilful, high tempered, and imperious. She resists brute 
force with a violent resentment that cannot be conquered. She 
yields to the power of kindness with the affectionate sensibility of 
a noble-born gentlewoman. She is ambitious to the degree of 
rashness, and intelligent far beyond her. years and opportunities. 

No other trainer, within my knowledge, either living or dead, at 
all times, and under all circumstances, seems to realize that the* 
best method of exercising mind over matter in the horse creation 
is by the unfailing power of considerate kindness. 

When led out for a trial at Chester Park she plunged 
and jumped with such mad fury that she had to be 
taken back to the stable; but her trainer preserved 
invariable kindness and gentleness in his treatment 
and ultimately made her tractable. 

Six perfectly trained horses were recently exhibited 
in San Francisco, in the education of which the whip 
had been discarded and kindness alone relied on. 

Prof. Wagoner says: 

Many think they are doing finely, and are proud of their success 
in horse -training, by severe whipping, or otherwise arousing and 
stimulating the passions, and then through necessity crushing the 
will, through which the resistance is prompted. No mistake can 
be greater than this, and there is nothing that so fully exhibits the 
ability, judgment and skill of the real horseman as the care dis- 
played in winning instead of repelling the action of the mind. 
Although it may be necessary to use the whip sometimes it should 
always be applied judiciously, and great care should be taken not to 
arouse the passions or excite the will to obstinacy. The legitimate 
and proper use of the whip is calculated to operate upon the sense 
of fear almost entirely. The affectionate and better nature must 
be appealed to in training a horse as well as a child. A reproof 
given may be intended for the good of the child, but if only the 
passions are excited the result is depraving and injurious. This 
is a vital principle and can be disregarded in the management of 
sensitive and courageous horses only at the risk of spoiling them. 

A correspondent of the Maine Farmer says: 

A neighbor recently remarked to me, " You have a faculty of 
charming steers." I replied that it was a mistake. I simply study 
their nature and adapt myself to that nature. In approaching 
them (whether they are in yoke or not), though I may "come with 
a rod," yet I always come with love. If I am in a hurry and a 
steer is in my path, I never give him a kick, or a thrust, with a 
yell, "Get out of my way," but instead I allow him the path, while 
I pass quietly by, gently rubbing him with the hand as I pass. The 
pressure of the hand on the animal has a powerful influence in 






ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. II9 

training him, and I had rather engage to bring two yoke of steers 
to a stage of good working discipline than tame one pair that had 
been taught to fear the presence of man. I think of several illus- 
trations, one that others may "go and do likewise." Yesterday 
I was carting with a pair of steers that were impatient about start- 
ing. Whenever they started too soon I would back them to the 
very spot from which they started, and rub their heads, or pick 
off loose hair from their bodies, and in one half hour the change in 
their general appearance was surprising. In handling them I al- 
ways endeavor to persuade them that even the goad cannot harm 
them. As I always approach them quietly, they have no inclina- 
tion to retreat from my presence. The " Golden Rule" does not 
come amiss, even in training steers, and I will treat them as I 
think I would desire to be treated were I in their condition. I 
never whip them except in rare cases of stubbornness, and then 
not severely, but calmly and candidly, without exciting fear in the 
animal; and the moment he yields, treat him with the greatest pos- 
sible kindness. 

Censure and disgrace are as little beneficial as 
physical punishments. In fact a vigorous thrashing 
privately administered without anger and followed by 
kind and respectful treatment or special friendliness 
is much better than public censure or disgrace, which 
lowers the self-respect and excites the evil passions. 
The only form of real punishment that can be tolerated 
or excused is that vigorous outburst of physical force 
which will impress the pupil with his physical help- 
lessness and inspire him with respect for the physical 
power of his teacher and the promptness with which 
he can check misconduct. But the storm should al- 
ways be promptly followed by sunshine. The pupil 
should never be allowed to think that his teacher has 
any prejudice or unkind feelings, and special kindness 
and tenderness should therefore be shown to those who 
have been controlled by any form of vigorous discip- 
line. 

But all these measures for eradicating vices and sub- 
duing rebellious natures belong only to the introduc- 
tion of moral education in a new and difficult field. An 
established school of moral education would have a 
controlling power in its songs, its general activity and 
happiness, its harmonious public opinion and its inter- 
esting exercises, to substitute new habits in a newly 
arrived pupil and make it easy for him to walk in the 



120 ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 

path in which others are walking with pleasure, sus- 
tained by the moral power of harmony — the song that 
supersedes the rod. 

Music is the expression of the perfectly beautiful, 
of that harmony which is of heaven; it therefore 
easily brings us into accord with heavenly life. But 
mere music is not heaven any more than mere lan- 
guage is knowledge; yet as language is the key to 
knowledge, so is music the key to heavenly life; and 
as language may unlock stores of wisdom, or of rub- 
bish, or of moral malaria, so may music open to our 
souls all the wealth of heavenly life, bringing the in- 
flux of all we need; or, on the other hand, it may bring 
a clangor which is not of heaven, but " of the earth, 
earthy" — as barren for the soul as metaphysics for the 
mind. 

There is not a faculty of the human soul which has 
not its appropriate food and stimulus in some form of 
music, and which may not by music be roused when 
weary or stimulated to its highest intensity. In fact 
every emotion or impulse, and consequently every or- 
gan of the brain, has its appropriate vocal sound and 
vocal peculiarity, by which it is recognized in the 
voice and to which sound it instantly responds. Music 
for moral or religious culture combines in its harmo- 
nies all the tones which belong to our nobler nature. 
But there is a constant degenerative tendency in pop- 
ular music, as in popular literature, to decline into the 
feeble expression that suits feeble minds, into the 
cold hardness which is on the plane of selfish natures, 
or into the pedantry of detail which belongs to mere 
perceptive intellect and mechanical execution, or into 
the expression of the restless, energetic, or violent 
passions. Music was a leading passion with Nero and 
the chief theme of his exorbitant vanity, as he fancied 
himself the greatest musician in the world and was 
never weary of exhibiting his power to vast audiences. 
There must, then, have been in the cithara that he 
played and the airs that he performed and sung 
something to gratify such a nature as his; and there 
must be a wide difference in the musical compositions 



ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 121 

which gratified him and the blood-thirsty populace 
that thronged to the bloody scenes of the Coliseum — 
or which pleases the money-loving, selfish, ostentatious 
and sensual throngs so often at the modern opera — 
and the simple music that in old times inspired the 
throngs of persecuted Christians, and which has ever 
been the foremost power in the diffusion of Christian- 
ity. 

" When I am weary of writing (said Luther at Wit- 
temberg to a Flemish traveller), when my brain grows 
heavy, or when the devil comes to play me one of his 
tricks, I take my flute and play an air, whereon my 
ideas return fresh as a flower dipped in water, the 
devil takes flight, and I renew my work with fresh ar- 
dor." " I do not love those who do not love music." 
" No preacher ought to mount the pulpit until he has 
learned his sol fa." 

While music thus wonderfully renovates the brain by 
awakening those emotions which sustain and govern 
the cerebral circulation, it also animates and sustains 
our health by animating the brain, and at the same 
time, by exercising the vocal organs, it develops the 
noblest part of the body. Prof. Monassein, of Russia, 
examined 222 singers of all ages, from nine to fifty- 
three, in reference to their spirometric development, 
and ascertained to his satisfaction that the circumfer- 
ence of the chest is greater both relatively and abso- 
lutely among singers than among those who do not 
sing, and that this superior development increases 
with the age and growth of the singer (see Medical 
Wochenschrift of St. Petersburg). Skilful trainers of 
the voice generally recognize the health-improving 
effects of vocal exercises. The higher emotions and 
energies are closely connected with the expansion of 
the lungs, especially of their upper portion, and hence 
the influx of lofty emotion and thought is called in- 
spiration, because physical inspiration is its correspond- 
ent and associate. Hence the orator speaks of "the 
emotions that swell my bosom." 

Music, especially vocal music, should therefore be 
used as a sustaining, energizing power, not only in 



122 ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 

school duties but on the play-ground. Observe how 
little children enjoy themselves as they join hands and 
march around singing some simple nursery rhyme. 
Observe how soldiers march to battle with boundless 
enthusiasm, inspired by patriotic songs — the Marseil- 
laise or Father-Land. See how the sailor alleviates 
his toil with some rude sound of yo-heave-o, and the 
negro makes his corn-husking labor a delightful frolic 
when he can accompany it by songs. 

Children on the play-ground would delight to have 
instrumental music to which they could dance, or to 
engage in sports in which they might guide their 
movements by songs and choruses. The introduction 
of such customs on the play-ground would banish all 
their rudeness and quarrelling and establish the cus- 
tom of politeness and good fellowship. Music is in- 
dispensable when we would move or cultivate the 
soul. It gives sweet repose to the cradle, happiness, 
to the fireside, gayety to company, social splendor to 
the ball-room, the spiritual life without which danc- 
ing would be mere muscular gymnastics, solemnity 
and fervor to the church, and overwhelming power to 
the religious revival, heroism to the battle-field, joy to 
all the labors in which it is introduced, and a grand 
solemnity to the funeral cortege. Wherever it is in- 
troduced it carries the soul along to its own sphere. 

But this inspiring and religious influence of music 
is entirely lost among irreligious musicians, whose 
fashionable airs exhibit musical ingenuity, but not 
musical eloquence. As verbose orators mistake rhe- 
torical elegance for eloquence, so do musicians often 
mistake their complexities of sound for essential 
music, which is the most perfect form of eloquence. 
Hence the protest against such music in churches. 
The Church Journal says: " The church was a very 
fashionable one; the choir a large one of fine voices; 
the music chosen was of the most vulgarly, showy, and 
irreligious kind, with the exception of the hymns, which 
were both well known and simple. " The Journal hopes 
there may be such an improvement in time that " we 
may no longer have the melancholy spectacle of a 



ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING, 12$ 

man preaching spiritual things at one end of a build- 
ing and a choir singing of 'the world, the flesh, and 
the devil ' at the other !" m 

Upon this subject musicians are divided, for they 
have not all abandoned expression for mere sonorous 
combination, which some call absolute music, as it 
aims at sound instead of expression. The great mu- 
sician Gluck " sought to bring back the music to its 
true function, that of recording the poetry in order to 
strengthen the expression of the sentiment" without super- 
fluous ornaments. Wagner and Liszt maintain the 
same view. Wagner insists that music should be sub- 
ordinate to the expression of emotion, and I beg leave 
to add that it should be devoted to the expression of 
the higher emotions — all that makes us better, stronger, 
nobler. It is wicked to sacrifice these purposes to 
the fanciful desires and false taste of the mere artist. 
The Rev. Dr. Dix, of Trinity Church, New York, ex- 
pressed the correct view. " The requisites of church 
music are that it should be of the essence worship; 
that it should be devotional, and that it should be 
simple, so that all should take part in it. The music 
could then be the voice of the whole people and not 
of the choir.'* So in education music should be sim- 
ple, strong, and emotional, giving to noble thoughts 
in language the power and the tenderness of the 
emotions. 

In the song-ruled school there is a tone of manners 
which is an ever-present educating power. 

Manners being simply the expression of the moral 
nature, the cultivation of manners is the cultivation of 
the soul by their reflux influence. All manners and 
social rules that are commendable are simply the ex- 
pression or manifestation of the fundamental law of 
Christ — unlimited love to God and man. Love in- 
cludes esteem, respect, appreciation, admiration, and 
a desire to please; consequently it is always actively 
courteous and abounding in kind, appreciative words 
while carefully avoiding every appearance of disre- 
spect, of censure, or of indifference. It creates a per- 
fect code of manners, and even when arbitrary rules 



124 ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 

are imposed by society it pays respect to social opinion 
and does not trample upon them. 

Reverence, este^n, admiration, appreciation, which 
are the lower grades of the loving sentiment, are so 
often lacking in the English-speaking races as to make 
bad manners the rule rather than exception. A surly 
coldness and critical disdain destroy the pleasure of 
social intercourse, or entirely forbid it among stran- 
gers. It is delightful to observe how opposite is the 
Italian system, children being taught polite demeanor 
and language from their earliest youth. This per- 
fect politeness establishes a social harmony between 
different ranks and classes. There is nothing to hin- 
der the superior from being cordial to the inferior 
when the manners of the inferior are always pleasant 
and deferential. How delightful a contrast this to 
the surliness of English society, in which each class 
seems at war with the class below to keep it down, 
while the rudeness of the lower class often makes it 
difficult to welcome or even endure its companion- 
ship. Thus for the want of good manners society is 
divided into hostile groups, and the brotherhood of 
man utterly ignored, even in the church which pro- 
fesses it. The free companionship of the higher and 
lower classes in Italy, and especially of their children, 
is an instructive example for the American democracy. 

The American teacher should be himself a model 
of sincere politeness, invariably extending it to the 
humblest of his pupils, and requiring its observance 
by all. He should have a written code of manners 
covering all the details of deportment, which might 
be pleasantly enforced by appealing to a jury of the 
pupils to decide upon any infraction. 

A model for the treatment of children may be found 
in Japanese society, and its grand success in moulding 
the Japanese character to amiability and uprightness is 
a happy demonstration of the true principles of moral 
education. Mr. E. H. House says in Harper's Maga- 
zine (1872): 

11 I think that one of the most remarkable characteristics of the 
Japanese is the tender indulgence lavished by them upon their 



ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 1 25 

children, and the reciprocal respect and devotion which they re- 
ceive. There seems to be no system of discipline or training, as 
we understand it or profess to understand it, among them. Among 
all classes, high and low alike, the treatment of the young is al- 
most extravagantly affectionate and considerate. I do not remem- 
ber ever to have seen a child punished with violence in their 
country. And yet I should not know where to look elsewhere for 
equal good temper and docility. It has seemed to me that the 
early admission of children to intimate and confidential association 
with their parents, and the frank interchange of ideas and feelings 
in which they are encouraged, give an ease and an early develop- 
ment, which att with equal good for all. Certainly there is a great 
deal of natural dignity and manliness about the young lads without 
any departure, at least so far as a stranger can observe, from tke 
modesty and simplicity which in their family relations become 
them so well." 

Social influence is our chief ethical teacher. It is 
the food of the soul. He must have a very strong na- 
ture who does not assimilate with his society. In- 
tellect must be kindled by contact with intellect, our 
heroism by the hero, our virtue by the society of the 
good, of those who are trained and organized in 
virtue, in systems of virtuous action, in virtuous 
thought, in virtuous careers, from whom we may 
catch the contagion of goodness as we catch conta- 
gions of the morbid process of diseases. 

It is our duty then to seek the hero, the philanthro- 
pist in his mission, the philosopher in his progress, 
the woman in the flowering of her beauty — for the 
essence of her beauty, her charm, is virtue. As Mme. 
de Boigne wrote to Mme. Recamier (the most ad- 
mired woman of her time), " I have told you a hun- 
dred times and thought it a thousand, that what 
makes you so seductive is your kindheartedness." — 
" This same goodness of heart has greater power than 
all your other more brilliant advantages." — " It is 
because you are so good that you have turned so many 
heads." 

But the heroic, wise, and lovely are perhaps beyond 
our reach. They are too few in number to be the 
daily food of society, and perhaps ninety-nine in a 
hundred have passed away forever. But are they 
beyond our reach? Agnosticism says they have 



126 ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 

passed into nonentity, or into the sphere of the un- 
knowable. But is it so ? 

No! the wiser gnosticism of the noblest souls of all 
ages (whom the common herd do blindly follow in 
their faith) affirms that there is no passing away of 
anything but that transitory animal matter which is 
passing away every moment (a pound every day), and 
which passes away several times in the shortest life 
on earth. Ephemeral forms of matter pass, but the 
personal reality never passes away except as it en- 
larges its sphere of being to its supreme height. The 
historic conception remains for the Comptian agnostic, 
the everlasting reality for the philosopher. 

And we may seek them! The entire constellation 
of genius, grandeur, and moral worth is for us, for 
the humblest mortals who seek, for they who seek 
shall find. Biography brings them to us and portrait- 
ure brings their earthly forms. They become our 
companions, our best friends, for they cannot harm us, 
they can only help to lift our lives to their own level. 
Agnosticism cannot deny the power of ideas and ex- 
amples. Philosophy knows more and affirms the 
ever potent agency of the living soul. As the moon 
controls and elevates the ocean's waves, so is the ra- 
diance of heaven ever elevating the interior life of 
humanity. The same law determines the relation of 
human souls to the oversoul of the universe, and to 
the souls that have passed from mortal bodies. 

To that radiance we open our souls when we dwell 
on the thoughts of the departed and when we give 
our days to the highest class of biography. Judicious 
biographical reading is, then, one of the most import- 
ant means of moral education. Yet not biographical 
reading alone ; reading the best thoughts of the best 
men and women of all ages — the saints, the heroes, 
and the true philosophers, whose truthfulness was 
shown in noble lives. Would that I had time to index 
for aspiring souls, to catalogue and describe the 
choicest reading. The evils of trashy literature are so 
great that parents cannot be too careful in its exclu- 
sion. The need of such an index or catalogue of the 



ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. \2J 

useful is continually becoming greater. We are over- 
whelmed in a sea of literature. The catalogue aZone of 
the publications in the British Museum would require 
forty years for its perusal if we read one volume a 
week. 

How much of moral education and of high-toned 
biographical reading do we need to elevate the tone 
of society ? Its selfish tone, its frivolity and persiflage 
which were so offensive to Hannah More were 
equally so to that earnest philosopher J. Stuart Mill, 
who says that after spending his youth considerably 
in France, " having so little experience of English life, 
and the few people I knew being mostly such as had 
public objects of a large and personally disinterested 
kind at heart, I was ignorant of the low > oral tone of 
what in England is called society; the habit of not indeed 
professing, but taking for granted in every mode of 
implication that conduct is of course always directed 
to low and petty objects; the absence of high feelings 
which manifests itself by sneering depreciation of all 
demonstrations of them, and by general abstinence 
(except among a few of the stricter religionists) from 
professing any high principles of action at all, except 
in those preordained cases in which such profession is 
put on as part of the costume and formalities of the 
occasion. ,, 

Speaking of his friend, Mr. Austin, Mill says: " He 
had a strong distaste for the general meanness of 
English life, the absence of enlarged thoughts and un- 
selfish desires, the low objects on which the faculties 
of all classes of the English are intent." 

The elevated character formed by moral education 
will differ very widely from the common college pro- 
duct in many ways, especially in kind, prudent, and 
conservative sentiment. To destroy life, kill time, and 
scatter or squander the products of human toil, are the 
pleasures of the average collegian. To save life, to 
use every minute of time for a good purpose, and to 
conserve with religious care all the products of in- 
dustry will be the pleasure of the morally educated. 

Economy of expenditure which lies at the basis 



128 ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 

of every virtue has long been treated as some- 
thing degrading. The amount of personal expendi- 
ture represents the amount of selfishness, and no in- 
stitution is in a healthy moral condition in which 
large personal expenditures are tolerated and encour- 
aged. From a dollar and a half to two dollars a week 
will furnish an ample sufficiency of good, appropriate, 
and wholesome food.* A similar amount will furnish 
comfortable and respectable clothing and keep it in 
neat and cleanly condition. Two hundred dollars 
is therefore a liberal sum for these purposes, and a 
hundred more for room, fuel, and light ought to be 
sufficient. Three hundred dollars per capita is more 
than the majority of families expend who live by in- 
dustry. 

The report of the president and treasurer of Har- 
vard shows that in that institution the smallest annual 
outlay of a student was $471, the largest $2500 — the 
items of which, the president says, were all perfectly 
proper. The president commends $1365 as a proper 
sum, but says that the majority spend less than $850. 

At Oxford % 1500 is considered a minimum econom- 
ical expenditure, and a considerable number spend 
$5000. 

The expense at the Harvard Dining Hall Associa- 
tion was $3.90 per week. 

Economy is a virtue peculiarly needed in America, 
since we are losing our national advantages — our vast 
wealth of productive land by our wasteful habits. We 
spend our wealth in wasteful ostentation, and we de- 
stroy its foundation by a reckless, wasteful agriculture 
which impoverishes the soil. Industrial education 
alone can teach us economy with our means and teach 
the farmer to economize the resources of his soil. 
With industry and economy a young man is sure to 

* Col. Fitzgibbon, agent at London of the Canadian Govern- 
ment, having once failed to receive his remittance, was compelled 
to economize and lived upon sixpence a day for his food, and liked 
his diet so well that he continued the system long afterwards. A 
theological student in an Ohio college is said to have lived thirteen 
weeks on seven dollars. 



ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING, I2g 

succeed, without them he is sure to fail, and a vast 
number of our social failures is due to the absence of 
industrial moral education, which alone can impress 
economy. 

There is no limit to the ultimate prosperity of a 
nation in which all live within their income and all 
needless ostentation is repressed; and there is no es- 
cape from the continual presence of poverty, degrada- 
tion, misery, and crime, when all accumulations are 
destroyed by luxurious and ostentatious recklessness. 
The wanton waste of wealth is a crime so common and 
so thoughtlessly tolerated by moralists and pietists 
that great educational power should be exerted for its 
repression. Economy should be enforced through the 
whole course of education, and the spending money 
which a boy desires to control for himself he should 
be required to earn by useful labor. 

How greatly do we need that ethical education 
which has a backbone of useful industry to teach the 
value of human life and of human labor, which ex- 
presses the power of sustaining human life when em- 
bodied in the products which we call capital or wealth. 
We need a proper reverence for that wealth which is 
life-power. To the profligate man accumulations of 
wealth (by human toil and privation) beyond his own 
wants are merely superfluities to be squandered, espe- 
cially when they are found in a public treasury; and 
he destroys that wealth in lavish expenditure, osten- 
tation, and corruption as freely and heartlessly as the 
western adventurer destroys the wild buffalo for sport, 
leaving Indian tribes that depend on hunting to suffer 
or starve. To drain the treasury is to lap the life- 
blood of a nation. A thousand dollars in a poor com- 
munity potentially represents a life, and half that 
sum an education. To the wealthy the thousand dol- 
lars represents only a trifle of ostentation or amuse- 
ment, and the wealthy generally control legislation. 

It is difficult for the sacredness of public money, 
gathered largely from the earnings of the poor, to be 
realized by the selfish sensualist with brandy-deadened 
brain, or the capitalist to whom money is a plaything 



130 ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 

or an instrument; and it is only by a prolonged course 
of morally educational industry, in which we balance 
our toil against the money it procures, that we can real- 
ize the relation of money to human life and the absolute 
duty of handling one as carefully or tenderly as the 
other. In India, w T hen the money of the famine fund 
was seized to pay for a military invasion of Afghan- 
istan, it was very clear that the waste in war of every 
fifty dollars was the destruction of one or more lives 
whom that amount would have saved from starvation. 
In the United States the relation of money to life is not 
so painfully close, but it still exists, and governmental 
profligacy is ever here a stern and cruel reality. 

Nations are bled to the verge of death by the osten- 
tation of governments and aristocracies, and in the 
State of New York its legislators are responsible for 
the vast amount of pauperism, ignorance, and crime 
which the thirteen millions wasted on the needless 
capitol building would have prevented. Wisely em- 
ployed it might have established institutions which 
would have abolished nine tenths of the crime that 
now infests the state. But it is lost to humanity, and 
millions will be as vainly lost every year until moral 
education shall have enlightened public opinion. 

There has been no public conscience in the college, 
the pulpit, the press, or the social circle to maintain 
these principles heretofore. Luxury is not only prac- 
tised but defended, even from the pulpit, and the 
shallowest sort of ethical quackery has sanctioned 
every wasteful expenditure as a good thing for society. 
It is pleasant to find the just sentiment advanced to- 
day by Prof. Goldwin Smith: "I hold that the wealth 
of mankind is morally a common store; that we are 
morally bound to increase it as much, and to waste it 
as little, as we can" — a wise and pregnant sentence. 

It requires a higher development of the moral na- 
ture to realize the cruelty of profligate waste than of 
the cruel acts in which our miseducated youth delight. 
" If I were a teacher in a school (said John Bright) I 
would make it a very important part of my business 
to impress every boy and girl with the duty of being 



ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 1 31 

kind to all animals. It is impossible to say how much 
suffering there is in the world from the barbarity and 
' unkindness which people show to what we call the in- 
ferior creatures. " 

The greatest delight of the average school-boy is to 
escape from his school and engage in hunting, which 
would not be attractive if his moral nature were prop- 
erly cultivated. Hunting for sport is a relic of bar- 
barism, an indulgence of fierce propensities that should 
be entirely prohibited. Prof. Tevons suggests that it 
is a small estimate to say that three million animals 
are painfully wounded or mangled annually in Great 
Britain. All of these have similar capacities to our 
own for suffering and pleasure, and many of them 
excel man in the strength of their affections. The 
wanton slaughter and torture of these, practised by 
many for the mere pleasure of shooting, differs from 
murder only in degree and stimulates the murderous 
impulse, as in the case of a Georgia boy who was 
aiming a gun at a robin. According to the newspaper 
statement, 

' ' A little girl begged him not to shoot the bird, and, when he 
would not desist, scared it away. The exasperated young hunter 
thereupon shot the girl." 

The Germans are taking the proper view of this 
subject and the proper course of action. A con- 
vention of Associations for the Prevention of Cruelty 
to Animals was recently held at Gotha in Germany, 
in which the societies of eighty-four different cities 
were represented, and it was determined by the con- 
vention that instead of relying on penal laws against 
cruelty to animals they should adopt a general plan 
in co-operation with teachers for instilling sentiments 
of gentleness and humanity in youth. 

One of the greatest duties of life is that of making 
wife and husband happy in their conjugal relation; 
from that sphere of domestic harmony and happiness 
come all the advancement and glory of future gener- 
ations. The boy who has not learned to be courteous 
and affectionate to women is unfit for society. Hence 



132 ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 

there is great advantage in co-education, which offers 
the opportunity of teaching boys habitual and un- 
varying courtesy to girls. 

"The best husband I ever met (says Miss Mulock in her " Ser- 
mons out of Church") came out of a family where the mother, a 
most heroic, self-denying woman, laid down the absolute law, 
' Girls first ' — not in authority, but first to be thought of as to pro- 
tection and tenderness. Consequently, the chivalrous care which 
these gentlemen were taught to show to their own sisters naturally 
extended itself to all women. They grew up true gentlemen — gentle 
men — generous, jmexacting, courteous of speech, and kind of 
heart." 

Some one to love is the first demand of generous 
natures, and some one to return our love is the need 
of all. The exercise of love maintains all our virtues 
fresh, fragrant, and buoyant. The reception of love 
enriches our life, removes all its clouds, and sustains 
us in every adversity, assists us to noble, heroic deeds, 
and to every duty. It is the crowning perfection and 
power of true Christianity to love and serve all around 
us with such energy and such sweetness of manners as 
to bring a returning harvest of esteem and love from 
all whose lives are not absorbed in self. 

This manifestation of love is a matter of manners, 
but these manners are merely an expression of the 
inner life, as the light and heat of a candle are a man- 
ifestation of its combustion. We observe in the 
manners of a boy the presence or absence of the 
pleasing courtesies of a kind nature, as we observe 
that a lamp gives a bright or a dim light, and needs 
attention accordingly. But there is this difference, 
that before we have changed the interior condition of 
the boy we may do much by regulating his manners, 
for every act has a reflex influence. A polite and 
deferential manner elicits in some degree the polite 
and deferential sentiments from which it should spring. 
The actor always elicits in himself the sentiment 
which his part expresses. Hence a code of manners 
insensibly moulds the character into conformity with 
it in the individual who obeys the code, and at the 
same time the corresponding manners in others have 



ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING. 133 

a similar effect. When boys are required to practise 
absolute politeness toward each other in all their in- 
tercourse they soon grow into friendly feelings which 
make that politeness spontaneous. 

The code of manners in a school should therefore 
be of the very highest character — not exacting in cer- 
emonials of a conventional nature, but imperative in 
demanding uniform kindness and suppressing every 
form of petulance, ill-temper, discourtesy, rude famil- 
iarity, and turbulence while demanding alacrity in 
serving and obliging others. All coarse familiarity 
should be checked by respectful forms of salutations 
and apologies for inadvertence, abruptness, or ne- 
glect. 

Ill-trained children will need to be carefully prac- 
tised in external manners to give them that grace 
which expresses refined sentiment and promotes its 
growth. They should be practised in bowing, shak- 
ing hands, walking in an orderly and graceful manner, 
giving precedence to others, rendering little services 
as opportunities occur, and making the salutations 
"good morning," "good evening," "are you well to- 
day ?" " thank you," " can I assist you ?" etc. 

All this cultivation of manners proceeds with the 
greatest ease where the sexes are educated together; 
and the loving spirit which expresses itself in refined 
manners will always abound where song is a familiar 
daily enjoyment. 

It cannot be too deeply impressed on the mind that 
education is fertile and successful in proportion as it 
is inspired by love, and barren of all beneficent 
results in proportion as love is absent. The teacher is 
himself the source of that loving influence, and his 
ability to win the love and esteem of his pupils should 
be considered his highest qualification. 

The proper spirit of the teacher was well expressed 
by Mr. G. H, Davis of Philadelphia at a meeting of 
the State Teachers' Association, August, 1872: 

11 When I look down through their childish eyes, so full of truth, 
to the depth of their unsullied hearts, when I catch the merry prat- 
tle of their voices, or run my fingers through the curly ringlets of 



134 ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND TRAINING, 

their hair, when their tiny hand twines itself around my manlier 
finger, or I catch them in my arms that theirs may encircle my 
neck, when I romp with them in their childish glee, or soothe them 
in their childish sorrow, I love them, and I love them as I love my 
mother. I love my own first, best, and dearest, but I love others 
too, and I would rather go to my grave with a requiem sung by 
children's hearts, with children to weep tears and children to plant 
flowers, than amid the booming of guns, the half-masting of flags, 

and the solemn dirge of earth's heroes 

" Experience teaches me that sunshine is necessary to the blos- 
som, the bloom, and the development of children. Look at those 
who live upon it and thrive upon it; what ruddy cheeks of health, 
what clear eyes, and how the laughter ripples out from their hearts 
brimfull of merriment. And this is true of the sunshine that sparkles 
in the tone and the deportment of the teacher, and he or she is the 
most successful in your proud vocation who carries on each suc- 
ceeding morning to the class and to each and every scholar thereof 
a bright and smiling face and a happy heart. The most successful 
teacher, other requisites being equal, is he or she who is the bright- 
est and cheeriest teacher, who rules the class by the law of love, 
and lives a life of sunshine." 



CHAPTER VI. 

RELATION OF ETHICAL TO RELIGIOUS 
EDUCATION. 

The question of religious education. — Antagonism of false religion 
and false science, which embarrasses education. — Origin of 
false religion. — Similar origin of false science. — What is true re- 
ligion? — Folly, limitations, and defects of dogmatic agnosticism. 
— Its harmony with animalism and with theological bigotry. 
— Shall we recognize the supernal in public schools ? — 
Difference of true and pragmatic prayer. — Testimony of 
Cousin and Guizot.— Difficulties arising from bigotry. — Evils 
of irreligious education. — Failures of colleges and churches. — 
Great power of moral education. — Power of religion for the 
development of character^ development of brain, and mainte- 
nance of health. — Power of physical culture. — Obedience to 
divine law brings every good, disobedience every evil. — Mili- 
tary example. — Future of moral education. 

One of the most embarrassing questions to-day is 
whether religion shall be inculcated in schools, and 
whether the Bible shall be used for this purpose. Can 
the essentials of religion be harmonized with the 
freedom of reason and the authority of positive sci- 
ence ? 

It is evident that true religion and true science must 
harmonize, while false religion and false science may 
differ. How then are they falsified and placed in an- 
tagonism as they have been in the past and to a great 
extent at the present time ? 

Religion when grasped by the carnal or selfish mind 
is changed, reversed, or annihilated ; for selfishness 
cannot comprehend love. Selfish, domineering intel- 
lect conceives religion merely as a system of govern- 
ment and set of dogmas which are to be enforced. It 
establishes a stern dogmatic theology, enforced by 



I36 ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 

terrible penalties, in which love, the essence of relig- 
ion, is a mere form of words. Such theology, more 
antagonistic to the teachings of Jesus Christ than the 
heedless life of worldly pleasure, has been in conflict 
with science during the greater part of the history of 
the church, and has been slowly losing its power and 
surrendering every contested position, until to-day its 
total destruction by the power of science is only a 
question of time. 

But as dogmatic theology goes down into extinc- 
tion and true religion remains in its stead, the lat- 
ter comes into conflict with debased science as sci- 
ence had before came into conflict with debased re- 
ligion. The debasement of science comes from the 
same cause in human nature as the debasement of re- 
ligion. The debasement, of religion produced dog- 
matic theology (with despotism, torture, and dungeons 
in this life and infinite torture in the next), and the 
debasement of science by the animal nature produced 
pessimistic materialism, utterly blind to everything 
beyond the reach of the external senses and at war 
with all forms of religious thought and sentiment; 
therefore as hostile to true religion as to dogmatic 
bigotry, because true religion necessarily embraces 
a supernal element. The great conflict of to-day is 
the conflict of the scientific pessimism with all pos- 
sible forms of religion, and this conflict necessarily 
arises in the school and college. 

This debasement of science and, religion is mainly 
dependent on individual character. One man under 
religious influences becomes a domineering and dog- 
matic bigot,while another of kindlier and nobler nature 
becomes a pious philanthropist. So in science one 
becomes a dogmatic, skeptical materialist, and another 
a generous-minded philosopher, open to all truth. 
But the power of education is such that when our col- 
leges are filled with cold-blooded, selfish pessimists 
as teachers we shall have therefrom a supply of dog- 
matic bigots and of narrow-minded dogmatic agnos- 
tics, living in intense antagonism to each other. But 
if they are filled with men of noble, kindly, and ge- 



ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 1 37 

nial natures, they will develop a true, unbigoted re 
ligion in the church, and an elevated philosophy in the 
sphere of science harmonizing with religion. 

True philosophy appreciates and comprehends both 
religion and science, bringing them into harmony. 
Such religion and such science should be taught in 
colleges and schools, while dogmatic theology and 
agnostic science and philosophy should be excluded. 
It is the dogmatic creedal theology which rouses 
popular hostility by its arrogance, and it is a dicta- 
torial agnosticism which disturbs and alarms the 
religious mind. 

The true religion which is entitled to a place in 
all educational systems is that recognized and estab- 
lished by the Creator — established in the spiritual con- 
stitution of man — established in the form of a rever- 
ential love for the divine and holy, an all-embracing 
love for humanity, a glowing faith in all that is good, 
in the capacity and progress of humanity, in the di- 
vine wisdom and benevolence which are continually 
dawning on our minds in new truths, in the virtues 
and truth of our friends, and in our ultimate destiny. 
It is established in the sense of duty and strength of 
will which enable us to conquer all difficulties, and 
the spiritual faculties which realize inspiration and 
bring into our own souls an immortality enjoyed 
by our predecessors, thus lifting us into a sphere of 
thought and emotion, too firm too tranquil and strong 
to be disturbed in duty by the petty difficulties, 
temptations and annoyances of daily life. 

The most resolute agnostic cannot object to the 
moral elevation of the religious character, though he 
may object to the convictions which naturally arise 
in such a character from its clearer and more exalted 
view of life. But the smaller class of dogmatic infi- 
dels (by which name we recognize, according to its 
etymology, men without faith, who reject human tes- 
timony to all beyond their own limited experience 
and assail as knaves and dupes all of much larger 
faith than themselves) are necessarily a disturbing 
element from their pragmatic meddling and scien- 



138 ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 

tific bigotry.* And as pragmatic dogmatism is the 
same spirit, whether manifested in science, philosophy, 
or theology, it is not strange to find the domineering 
theologian generally co-operating with the dogmatic 
infidel in hostility to that philosophy which unites 
religion and science, and which in the spirit of the 
philosopher Herschel would hope all things not im- 
possible and believe all things not unreasonable. 

The Cartesian folly, that universal doubt , or in other 
words the dogmatic assertion of our own and oth- 
ers' ignorance, is the beginning of wisdom (while it is 
in fact the beginning of stolidity) is so gloomily 
prevalent among physical scientists as to constitute 
a formidable hindrance to the development of any 
comprehensive philosophy of the universe, any recog- 
nition of the divine, and any development of moral 
education which shall effectively enlist the higher 
emotions, the moral enthusiasm and grandeur of na- 
ture which exist in man, as they have been displayed 
for our benefit by the heroes, philanthropists, and 
saints of history. 

Resolute justice, fidelity to engagements, courage, 
friendship, prudence, economy, temperance, self-con- 
trol, patriotism, financial honesty, gratitude, unselfish- 
ness, and other virtues may coexist with dogmatic ag- 
nosticism but it is not compatible with the highest de- 
velopment of humanity. For it has not that calm 
refining and subduing influence which comes from 
the consciousness of something far above and beyond 
ourselves — that grand ideal which, if it were only an 
ideal, still guides and assists us as the model of beau- 
tiful form assists the sculptor, but which if it be the 
most actual of realities inspires us as the presence of 
a loving friend of nobler nature than ourselves; an in- 
fluence from which the agnostic turns away in ignor- 
ance of its existence. But how can a modest and 
well-balanced being ignore all parentage, and say that 

* This style of infidelity is vastly more prevalent among those 
who are not publicly known- as infidels than among the few whose 
frankness and spirit of propagandism bring them into notice. 



ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 139 

I with all my ignorance, my feebleness, and limitation 
am the grandest element of the universe; my intelli- 
gence is the highest intelligence that can exist in a 
universe that continually teaches us as infants of the 
kindergarten and holds out the promise of unlimited 
stores of knowledge and philosophy which seem at 
present beyond our utmost attainment in future with 
our present capacities. 

The agnostic has no conception of the infinite pos- 
sibilities (not yet explored) of the divine wisdom em- 
bodied in the universe, and therefore is not hospita- 
bly open to welcome new truths; nor has he any ade- 
quate conception of the dignity and future possibili- 
ties of humanity, and the goal to which its steps 
should be directed. 

No victor's crown appears to await the agnostic 
after the battle of life is well fought, and therefore he 
cannot afford to be defeated with the right when he 
can be triumphant with the wrong. 

There is no sunshine breaking through the clouds 
of his sky from a higher realm. Discord and slander, 
disease and want, war and crime, misery, melancholy, 
and insanity surround as a present and unchanging 
reality, tinging his life with that pessimism which 
deadens his better impulses and which to many sug- 
gests suicide as a probable relief. 

To him the present has an overmastering import- 
ance, and the love which should accompany his whole 
life is suddenly torn from him by death, leaving a 
gloom which paralyzes his nature for a longer time as 
it was dearer to him; and in like manner he continual- 
ly encounters gloomy tragedies in consequence of his 
limited views of life, which would be neither very 
gloomy nor very tragic if he enjoyed the illumination 
of a higher knowledge. The grand failures of the ag- 
nostic in the wise and happy guidance of life (which 
will be fully set forth in my anthropological writings) 
are such that the agnostic influence over education 
may be classed among social calamities. 

There is a combination of modesty, spiritual refine- 
ment, impressibility to truth, spiritual brightness, en- 



140 ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 

thusiasm, hope, and serenity which belongs to the 
truly religious nature which the agnostic never at- 
tains. 

To him there is no conscious communion with de- 
parted friends, no consciousness of any divine or an- 
gelic influence in exalted moments; the fountains of 
inspiration are not for him; all the moral grandeur of 
the past is but a tombstone association, and all prayer 
is but a superstitious ceremony. 

The basic defect of agnosticism is the same as that 
of theological bigotry— the narrowness of mind which 
rejects all beyond and above the conceptions in which 
we have been educated so stubbornly as to refuse to 
accept the most credible evidence. 

The rare and curious events in which the great 
hidden powers of the universe are manifested and a 
flood of light thrown upon nature's mysteries would 
be utterly lost upon such scientists; for if the imme- 
diate observer were willing to observe and competent 
to describe without suppressing the facts that were 
apparent he would be as incapable (if he were willing) 
of transferring the knowledge to brother scientists of 
the faithless class as a group of horses on South 
American pampas would be unable to transfer a 
knowledge of an eclipse visible in the southern hemi- 
sphere to a herd of horses on the prairies of New 
Mexico. The paralysis of rational faith renders it im- 
possible that the faithless scientist should know any- 
thing beyond the familiar physical occurrences which 
are universal, and has the same paralyzing power 
against the philosophy which would comprehend the 
universe as the faithless rejection of rare and curious 
fossils would exercise in paralyzing the highest devel- 
opment of geology. 

The paralyzing influence of a materialistic teacher 
upon the higher faculties of the mind is largely due to 
the fact that he works in accord with that animalism 
which is the basis of an energetic character, and which 
exists in riotous strength in the youth not yet trained 
into modesty, gentleness, forbearance, and refinement, 
who would prefer a pugilistic or base ball contest to 



ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 141 

any intellectual pleasure. It was easy to perpetuate 
moral debasement at Rome in the days of the Caesars 
by the brutal floggings which boys received at school 
and the bloody gladiatorial spectacles at the amphi- 
theatre. It is easy to prolong the reign of animalism 
in America by excluding all thoughts of a divine 
power to whom reverence is due, and by ignoring 
human testimony as worthless, teaching the pupil to 
to rely on his own senses and physical demonstrations 
alone, which necessarily excludes every spiritual or 
religious fact ancient or modern. 

Nor is the influence of the narrow mind any better 
when it occupies the theological field. 

"Let those men (says President McCosh) in addition be narrow 
and censorious; let them be forever denouncing Pantheism, Ma- 
terialism, Darwinism, and all sorts of heresies of which they know 
little, and we venture to predict that in a few years they will make 
the better half of the college doubters or open skeptics. We know 
colleges both in the old world and the new where zealous patrons 
have secured this end as effectively as if they had been in the pay 
of the enemy." 

When we rise above the limitations of both sensuous 
and creedal dogmatism we find one essential religion 
for all nations, a religion more perfectly presented by 
Jesus than by any other leader of mankind, a religion 
that adores the infinite Father, loves the unlimited 
brotherhood of humanity, and clings to the ascended 
humanity of past ages which inspires the humanity of 
to-day, a religion of love, aspiration, and labor, to 
which the agnostic can have no great objection in its 
results. 

It is scarcely possible to do justice to the religious 
sentiments without a distinct recognition of the spir- 
itual truths which agnosticism rejects. But it is not 
necessary to present these truths in a dogmatic or co- 
ercive manner. We may allude to the Deity as gener- 
ally recognized by mankind while stating candidly 
that many consider the supreme power an unknowable 
mystery, and we may, when referring to the future 
life as a matter of general belief, speak respectfully of 
the fact that a number of intelligent persons regard 



142 ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 

that also as beyond our knowledge. So much of def- 
erence may be due in public schools to the sentiments 
of agnostic parents, if such there be, but the time is 
not very remote when the agnostic denial of a future 
life will disappear from intelligent and respectable 
society, and the doctrine that the ultimate governing 
power of the universe is spiritual will be universally 
recognized as a philosophic truth. 

But the culture of the religious nature depends much 
less on any doctrinal statement than on the power 
of song and the silent influence of the teacher's char- 
acter. A deeply reverent man will diffuse a religious 
influence around him without ever stating a religious 
proposition. Every tender, loving, reverent emotion 
is a religious exercise and develops the religious na- 
ture. 

The admissibility of prayer as a school exercise has 
been greatly diminished by the degradation of prayer 
in the ministrations of theologians. Loquacity, which 
might be called one of our American vices, is the an- 
tagonist of reverence. It is an arrogant attempt to 
impose our personality on others and compel them to 
listen to our thoughts, whether they are worth listen- 
ing to or not. 

The introduction of pragmatic loquacity in a prayer 
is a desecration and destruction of its true purpose. 
The deepest reverence is silent ; and secret, silent 
prayer was therefore recommended by Jesus. Speech 
is in some degree a disturbance of that reverence, but 
perhaps a trained habit of speech may become associ- 
ated with deeply reverent sentiments, and hence it is 
not impossible that public prayer may be truly rev- 
erent, but in fact it seldom is. The average prayer is 
a familiar and almost insolent demand for the gratifi- 
cation of our wishes, an expression of creedal theories, 
of likes and dislikes, a discussion of miscellaneous 
topics, and an insincere self-abasement. A true prayer 
is calm, reverent, subdued in manner, brief in speech, 
and neither familiar nor beggarly, but expressive of 
aspiration to the divine life, loyalty of purpose, and 
grandeur of sentiment. 



ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. I43 

The mind aspiring to the divine rises above all pet- 
tiness in the realm of all-comprehending love and 
heroic earnestness; such should be as far as possible 
our habitual mood, and prayer is its reenforcement, by 
turning away from the little things which lower our 
life to the infinite greatness and love which elevate 
it and establish or confirm the religious habits of 
thought and life. 

Ample experience attests the value of religion in 
education. Victor Cousin, after being employed by 
his government to examine the schools of Europe, 
said: 

11 Religion is in my eyes the best, perhaps the only basis of 
popular education. I know something of Europe, and never have 
I seen good schools where the spirit of Christian charity was want- 
ing. Primary instruction flourishes in three countries, Holland, 
Scotland, and Germany. In all it is profoundly religious. In 
France, with few exceptions, our best schools for the poor are 
those of the ' Brothers of the Christian Doctrine,' " 

M. Guizot, when Minister of Public Instruction, said 
in an address to the pupils of the normal schools: 

M Among the objects of instruction there is one which demands 
from me particular notice, or rather the law itself, in placing it at 
the head of all others, has committed it especially to our zeal; I 
mean moral and religious instruction. It is absolutely necessary 
that popular instruction should not be addressed to the understand- 
ing only; it must embrace the whole soul, and especially must it 
awaken the moral conscience which ought to be educated and 
strengthened in proportion as the mind is developed." 

It will not be possible to introduce religious educa- 
tion in American schools unless the friends of religion 
shall be sufficiently enlightened to realize that theol- 
ogy is not religion, and has no essential connection 
with that which Jesus Christ presented as the sum- 
mary of all his teachings — unlimited love. That so- 
called religious teaching which, as Prof. Corrson has 
well said, " is too often a systematic narrowing of the 
mind, and a systematic deadening of the religious sen- 
timent," has created so jealous a prejudice against 
religious teaching that it can never be tolerated in 
public schools unless it conforms to that pure ideal of 



ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 

Christ which has never ceased to be loved and ad- 
mired by mankind. Every good sentiment which can 
be imparted is a portion of that pure ideal to which 
no one can properly object, however resolute his hos- 
tility against creedal bigotry. 

An education which does not embrace the religious 
view of the universe not only weakens the moral facul- 
ties by inanition and deprives them of their richest 
food, but weakens the intellect by accustoming the 
mind to feeble and superficial conceptions which 
neither embrace the true plan of the universe nor the na- 
ture and history of man, nor furnish the grand impelling 
and inspiring motives which arise from the full realiza- 
tion of God and humanity. Those universities, espe- 
cially European, which are dominated in one instance 
by the speculative emptiness of Hegelianism, in another 
by the contracted ideas of positivism, and in another by 
the crass materialism of Moleschott and Buchner exert 
in a minor degree the same deadening influence on 
human progress and education as the Aristotelianism 
of the dark ages, for their errors are not simply errors 
of speculative thought. Their erroneous speculations 
are based upon erroneous sentiment, upon ethical 
defects of character, which display themselves in 
defective modes of thought as other basic errors in 
character display themselves in despotic doctrines and 
the maintenance of despotic governments, while 
other moral defects result in social anarchy. Falsity 
in character brings falsity in opinion and in action. 

Whether the irreligious education be dominated by 
the short-sighted views of merely physical science, or 
by the purposeless abstractions of metaphysics which 
grasp neither physical nor spiritual science, it fails to 
furnish some of the requisites of a noble manhood and a 
tender and beautiful womanhood which is nourished by 
every system of spiritual and earnest religion however 
it may be alloyed by ignorant superstition. When it 
was recently proposed by the French authorities to 
replace the Sisters of Mercy who act as nurses in the 
hospitals by lay female assistants, the proposition was 
warmly opposed by men of all various political and 



ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 145 

religious sentiments, because they knew that nowhere 
would be found outside of religious influence the de- 
votion and fidelity, the tenderness and self-denial of 
these humble devotees. Even Hume, it is said, when 
asked by a lady whether he would prefer to select for 
a confidential domestic one believing his own princi- 
ples or one believing in religion, confessed that he 
would prefer the latter. 

The physical scientist has a solid foundation on 
which a grand superstructure may be erected, but the 
mere metaphysician understands neither the lower 
nor the upper world. To him may well be applied 
the rebuke which was said to have been addressed by 
a venerable Christian to Justin Martyr when he was 
enamoured of Platonic philosophy and supposed that 
in it he had found the road to the highest wisdom: 

"You are a mere dealer in words, but no lover of action and 
truth; your aim is not to be a practiser of good, but a clever dis- 
putant, a cunning sophist. " 

He profited by the rebuke and became a Christian 
philosopher. 

When the education which has been controlled by the 
dead languages and mathematics is enlarged by the 
addition of the physical sciences it becomes more sub- 
stantial, but no more ennobling to the soul, and but 
little more expansive to the reason. Such an educa- 
tion is fit only for the life of selfish ambition. 

The colleges have never furnished the training 
which would fit men for a higher life than our present 
social condition, or stimulate or create a longing for 
such a life. And the church, though it may be a bul- 
wark against social degeneracy, is so imbedded in and 
identified with the national character in each country 
that we cannot look to it for any great forward move- 
ment or absolute conquest of social evils. Fifteen cen- 
turies of power have tested its capacity and the results 
are not encouraging. 

The church deals with the adult, confirmed in 
habits, to modify but not revolutionize his character. 
Moral education deals with the child and does revolu- 



146 ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 

tionize his character. That in which churches and 
schools have failed for thousands of years is now seen 
to be entirely practicable by moral education, and 
hence we may say that its efficient introduction will 
be the most important measure for mankind that has 
ever been proposed, a change far greater than any 
prior change from savage to civilized life, making a 
broad contrast between the future and the past. 

The moral education which has sustained society 
heretofore has been chiefly derived from the mother 
in the tender period of childhood; but more powerful 
even than the mother's influence will be the school of 
moral education in its multiform influences and sur- 
roundings, the inspiring influence of music, the con- 
trolling power of the teacher's mind and voice, the 
ever-present influences of companionship, and the 
unanimous sentiments of the juvenile multitude in 
their progress to a higher development making a 
social power which assimilates all who come within 
its reach. 

There are few who realize the power of religious 
education, the energy with which the religious or the 
leading sentiment of the moral nature inspires all our 
faculties, sustains the energy of the brain, brightens 
the soul, and sustains the moral and physical health. 
It would carry us into too large a field of science and 
philosophy to attempt a demonstration of this. 

As certainly as we can develop the lower can we 
develop the higher elements of humanity. It is no 
more difficult with proper means and methods to de- 
velop saints than to develop sots and assassins, no 
more difficult to develop the brain than to develop 
the muscles, though the development may be more 
apparent in its powers than in its growth or struc- 
ture. The casts of heads taken by Deville of London 
at different periods of life gave definite proof of the 
growth of the brain in the portions that were culti- 
vated, and every gymnasium yields evidence of bodily 
development by culture. The exact statements of 
Prof. Maclaren are worth quoting to show the abso- 
lute power of training: 



ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 1 47 

"Some years ago twelve non-commissioned officers, selected 
from all branches of the service, were sent to him to qualify as 
instructors for the British army. They ranged between 19 and 29 
years of age, between 5 feet 5 inches and 6 feet in height, between 
128 pounds and 174 pounds in weight. He carefully registered 
the measurements of each at the start, and at different times 
throughout their progress. The muscular additions to the arms 
and shoulders and the expansion of the chest were so great as to 
have absolutely a ludicrous and embarrassing result; for before 
the fourth month several of the men could not get into their uni- 
forms, jackets, and tunics without assistance; and when they had 
got them on, they could not get them to meet down the middle by 
a hand's breadth. In a month more they could not get into them 
at all, and new clothing had to be procured, pending the arrival of 
which the men had to go to and from the gymnasium in their great 
coats. One of these men gained five inches in actual girth of 
chest. . . . 

" Of these twelve men, in less than eight months every one gained 
perceptibly in height; indeed, there was an average gain of five- 
twelfths of an inch in height, though all, save one, were over 
twenty; and one man who gained half an inch was twenty-eight 
years old, while one twenty-six gained five-eighths of an inch. All 
increased decidedly in weight, the smallest gain being 5 pounds, 
the average 10 pounds. ... It is not likely there was much fat 
about them, as they had so much vigorous muscular exercise. 
Every man's chest enlarged decidedly, the smallest gain being a 
whole inch in the four months, the average being 2-J inches, and 
one, though twenty-four years old, actually gained five inches, or 
over an inch a month. Every upper arm increased one inch, most 
of them more than that, and one if inches." 

The parallel experience in cerebral and psychic 
changes is as decisive and frequent as in the muscular 
system. The conversion of debased sots and social 
outlaws into good citizens by religious inspiration has 
everywhere accompanied the active progress of the 
church, and it is now being shown every day in houses 
for inebriate reformation that religion may become 
the savior of the drunkard when all other means have 
failed. 

A strong religious inspiration so grandly exalts the 
powers of soul and body as to carry men successfully 
through the greatest difficulties, and the demonstra- 
tion has been in progress for many years at Dansville, 
New York, in the institution of Dr. J. C. Jackson, that 
men may sometimes be lifted by religion above the 
plane of disease, and that religion is in such cases 



I48 ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 

a more powerful hygienic agency than anything known 
to the medical profession. 

Intemperance, indolence, pauperism, disease, and 
crime, all vanish before the divine agency of religion, 
and when education shall become truly and profoundly 
religious we shall have a new world in which, with 
nobler races of fully developed men, liberty, pros- 
perity, and universal happiness will be assured. 

That the ethical power is the essential element of 
eternal life is absolutely certain, and that in proportion 
as that element declines the debasement tends toward 
extinction or death is clear to all comprehensive 
thinkers. It is a natural and truthful inference that 
the ethical is the true vitalizing and antiseptic element, 
amid the moral and physical decay and putrefaction 
of earth life. Hence the ethical superiority of woman 
is the prevalent cause of her superior longevity. Ac- 
cording to recent statistics Italy has 141 male and 241 
female centenarians; Austria has 183 male and 229 
female centenarians, also 42,528 males above ninety 
and 60,303 females. 

The nearer we come to God, or, in other words, the 
more perfectly we obey the divine law, the more com- 
pletely are we relieved from every evil that belongs to 
human life, and thus the law is demonstrated in its 
rewards and punishments. As under Dr. Jackson's 
guidance men conquer their physical infirmities, and 
as in past times the saints and martyrs have been sus- 
tained with marvellous power, so on the other hand do 
we see that " the wages of sin is death" in every prof- 
ligate population, in every degenerating nation, and 
especially in that service of evil which arrays itself 
against the divine laws — the service of homicide, com- 
monly called military service — which is everywhere 
attended by excessive mortality. The mortality in 
the Russian army, usually 38 annually in the thousand, 
is twice what it should be in the entire mass of the 
community and almost four times as great as among 
persons of the same ages in peaceful occupations. 
The mortality of British soldiers compared with that 
of civilians of similar ages is shown by Balfour to be 



ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 1 49 

almost twice as great, and in warm climates has been 
from three to four times as great. Of course in the ac- 
tual campaigns, when life becomes most infernal, the 
mortality is beyond computation; but the fact is to be 
observed that not more than one-fifth of the deaths are 
caused by the wounds of battle under favorable circum- 
stances, and that in many campaigns the deaths by dis- 
ease are from nine-tenths to nineteen-twentieths of all. 

The most debasing of all disorders, the venereal dis- 
ease, prevails extensively in armies, as it does in all 
profligate populations. 

The supreme wretchedness of military life is such 
that men die by their own hands with fearful fre- 
quency; it is safe to say three times as frequently as 
in civil life, for in Austria the ratio of military suicides 
is six times as great. Truly " the wages of sin is 
death," while the reward of a life in perfect accord 
with divine law is found in abounding joy and over- 
flowing health, making the daily life of the good man 
a daily beneficent influence to all around him. Into 
that life the first generation morally educated will en- 
ter, and the second generation may realize its wealth 
of development and happiness. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE RELATIONS OF ETHICAL TO INTEL- 
LECTUAL EDUCATION. 

Intellectual development, power and progress, dependent on the 
ethical. — The human soul is above the material; to comprehend 
it we must reach the ethical or spiritual sphere of thought. — 
Four elements of humanity, the divine or ethical, the intel- 
lectual, the executive, and the animal; the intellectual the least 
important. — Each element occupies a different region of the 
brain and has different physical effects. — All educational pro- 
cesses should be pleasant, whereby they improve the ethical 
tendencies. — The law of pleasure should be a paramount law in 
education. — The ethical elements, both the genial and the he- 
roic, are essential in education, literature, and philosophy. — De- 
pressing education, false opinions, dogmatism, and loquacity 
result from their absence. — Increase of knowledge and discovery 
depend on the ethical. — A stolid conservatism arises from its 
absence; examples: injurious effects of the fatiguing system 
of education on mind and body; the high moral development 
of the teacher the basis of ethical education; this leads directly 
to oral and illustrative teaching. — Summary of principles. 

The neglect of moral education heretofore has had 
a deadly influence upon intellectual culture, for moral 
energy is essential to intellectual power. Moral energy 
rouses the entire brain, and thus furnishes the capital 
which may be expended in intellectual effort, while 
purely intellectual effort not only exhausts the general 
vitality of the body (which has been so universally the 
tendency of schools and colleges heretofore, as to fur- 
nish an argument against the higher female education), 
but impairs the tone of the brain, impairs the manli- 
ness and womanliness of the character, impairs the 
moral energies, and thus, by taking away its psychic 
and physiological foundations, ultimately impairs the 
intellect itself, as we see in the feebleness of the book- 



ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 



151 



worm as contrasted with the politician and statesman. 
It is as difficult to sustain the intellectual without the 
moral power, as to sustain the circulation of the blood 
without the digestion of food.* 

This becomes quite obvious when we consider the 
elements of moral power, and their influence upon the 
brain and body. These elements are chiefly Firmness 
or Will, Perseverance, Dignity or Self-respect, Moral 
Ambition, Sense of Honor, Heroism, Conscience or 
Fidelity to Duty, Energy and Industry, Hope, Cheer- 
fulness, Love, Devotion, Friendship, Benevolence, 
Sympathy, Faith, Love of Truth or Sincerity, Spir- 
ituality and Reverence. 

It is obvious that without these powers man can do 
nothing effectively, either with his intellect or with 
any other power above the level of passion, sensuality, 
despair and crime. He cannot concentrate his mind, 
he cannot study, he cannot persist in any course, and 
he cannot think with sufficient vigor to profit by any 
opportunities. He is but a bundle of disorderly and 
ruinous propensities, going on necessarily in intem- 
perate sensuality and profligate crime to disease, 
despair, insanity and suicide, or the penal death of a 
criminal. 

On the other hand, if endowed with all these powers 
in an eminent degree, he will pursue with diligence, 
perseverance and enthusiasm the path of intellectual 
and social progress and elevation, and even with that 
mediocre intellectual capacity which makes the attain- 
» 

* "We are utterly, grossly wrong in attempting to increase the 
vigor of the mind by incessant intellectual effort. Many of our 
students not only strain the nerves in this manner beyond the 
power of healthy action, but leave the best feelings of the heart to 
languish and die for want of opportunity to act; and then fas- 
tidiously or philosophically, as they would have it, despise those 
finer, warmer emotions of which they are no longer susceptible. 
We cannot but pity the man who has thus buried the better half of 
his nature. . . . We pity him still more when he has sacrificed 
health itself to these excessive efforts." — Annals of Education. 

The sacrifice of virtue and the sacrifice of health go together— 
the manly virtues are connected with health. The loss of health 
is the loss of moral as well as physical power for all duties. 



152 ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 

ment of knowledge difficult, and prevents the winning 
of college honors, he is sure to win the honors of life, 
and surpass men of greater intellectual endowment 
and collegiate success, but of less nobility of char- 
acter. 

If, therefore, the collegiate life develops this nobility 
of character, it insures a present and permanent intel- 
lectual success, while if it does little or nothing to 
develop these noble qualities, it cannot be intellectu- 
ally successful; and if, still worse, it encourages by 
evil associations a low tone of principle, and represses 
the genial emotions by the cold, distant, and unfeeling 
deportment of professors in which selfishness is the 
supreme element, it inflicts a permanent injury * upon 
the intellectual and moral life of the pupils, rendering 
it probable that even the most gifted will achieve 
nothing for the intellectual progress of society unless 
from selfish motives. Locke perceived this evil so 
clearly as to prefer a private tutorship to a collegiate 
education. He says: 

" Till you can find a school wherein it is possible for the master 
to look after the manners of his scholars, and can show as great 
effects of his care of forming their minds to virtue, and their car- 
riage to good breeding, as of forming their tongues to the learned 
languages, you must confess that you have a strange value for 
words, when, preferring the languages of the ancient Greeks and 
Romans to that which made them such brave men, you think it 
worth while to hazard your son's innocence for a little Greek and 
Latin. For as for that boldness and spirit which lads get amongst 
their playfellows at school, it has ordinarily such a mixture of 
rudeness and ill-timed confidence that those misbecoming and dis- 
ingenuous ways of shifting in the world must be unlearned, and 
all tincture washed out again, to make way for better principles, 
and such manners as make a trustworthy man. He that considers 
how diametrically opposite the skill of living well and managing 
as a man should do his affairs in the world, is to that malapert- 
ness, trickery, or violence learnt amongst school-boys, will think 

* " To the question we have often asked, ' Do the best-informed 
parents you know consider it safe to send their children to the 
common schools ? ' the answer is almost uniformly in the negative, 
and we received this reply from one gentleman who had visited 
personally one hundred schools in one of the New England States: 
' Many of our schools have become nurseries of vice.' " — Annals of 
Education^ 1835. 



ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 



153 



the faults of a private education infinitely to be preferred to such 
improvements, and will take care to preserve his child's innocence 
and modesty at home, as being more of kin and more in the way of 
those qualities which make a useful and able man." 

That moral development or culture is the necessary 
basis of all progress was well illustrated by Prof. 
Seelye, in advocating the claims of missions, saying: 

"A moral and spiritual awakening must precede the intellectual. 
Men merged in sensualism, argues Plato in the " Sophist," must be 
improved before they can be instructed. Only as they become 
morally better can they become intellectually elevated and enlarged. 
There is here a deep truth of human nature and of history, which 
if well considered would settle this whole question. Men must be 
improved in order to be educated. Education follows as surely a 
moral improvement as flowers open to the sunlight. But education 
is as powerless to secure that improvement as is the plant the light 
and warmth by which it is quickened. [Observe how absolutely 
Prof. Seelye, like other collegians, limits his conception of education 
to intellectual culture — a culture destitute of all elevating power.] 
[As far as we can trace it historically a nation's intellectual progress 
'has always followed, never preceded, some new moral or spiritual 
impulse. I . . . It is religion, and not science or philosophy, 
which gives the inspiration to art and the living soul to genius. 
This truth, that the culture of the sentiments must precede that of 
thought, and that the thoughts of the intellect will be lofty as the 
sentiments of the heart are profound, is not now seen for the first 
time. Plato, Aristotle, and Bacon have expressed the same thing." 
" If therefore we begin our attempts to improve men through the 
instruction of their intellect, we shall end where we begin, having 
blown a bubble which bursts as soon as blown. [This is true of a 
purely intellectual education, but school education is generally 
accompanied by some moral influences. It cultivates patience, 
self-control, respect for authority, and such moral qualities as are 
incidentally stimulated by the example and voice of the teacher.] 
No amount of intelligence ever saved any people, and the most 
costly educational system is consistent with and sometimes actually 
found in the most corrupt social state." 

The paramount importance of moral as the basis of 
intellectual culture may be sustained by a few quota- 
tions from eminent writers * who have had a moment- 
ary or accidental glimpse of this truth, but the practical 

* Montaigne says: "We only toil and labor to stuff the memory, 
and in the mean time leave the conscience and the understanding im- 
poverished and void." 



154 ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 

drift of the literature of ages has been in an opposite 
direction. Philosophizers have delighted in the intel- 
lectual as the chief field of human improvement, and 
Socrates devoted his time to dialectic discussion, under 
the impression that erroneous conduct was the result 
of ignorance, and that virtue would be the necessary 
consequence of knowledge. 

Tn this we see the vast superiority of the religious 
teachers to the speculative philosophizers — the former 
basing human improvement on the ethical and the 
latter on the intellectual powers — the former being 
guided by a deeper insight or intuition. The com- 
parison between Jesus Christ and Socrates is almost 
a contrast. The former established a religious move- 
ment which has changed the destiny of civilized 
nations; the latter, through his pupils Plato and 
Aristotle, and their followers, introduced the most 
barren system of chaffy speculation that has ever be- 
clouded the human mind, the evil effects of which 
pervade our collegiate system of to-day. The practical 
superiority of Jesus over the other great Oriental 
teachers was shown in giving his whole attention to 
the ethical, discarding metaphysical speculation, ex- 
ternal formulae, and prior authority to develop the 
divine principle of Love, and bring man into relation 
with its divine source, the Heavenly Father of all. To 
• this great source go the most highly developed souls, 
and from the higher realms of eternal life they draw 
an inspiration which gives to human life an elevation, 
power, beauty and illumination which remove all its 
evils. 

The intellect which deals only in the material ex- 
ternals recognized by perception and handled by the 
practical energies, is capable of dealing efficiently with 
matter, but not with man, who is something above and 
beyond matter — a permanent spiritual power for 
eternity, whose nature, destiny, and law of develop- 
ment can be understood only by those who comprehend 
the divine spiritual power embodied in his constitution, 
and who realize that the development of that divine 
element above its clogs and hindrances is the great 



ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 155 

problem of human progress, in the solution of which 
all other problems are solved. 

Principles or sentiments are associated with truths, 
and the loftiest sentiments bring us up to the com- 
prehension of the loftiest and most far-reaching truths. 
There is no adequate comprehension of man, his life, 
his destiny, his faculties and their future evolution or 
normal education, except in that ethical sphere of 
thought which is above the material, which is in the 
light of immortality and disinterested love. I do not 
Say that sentiment alone gives wisdom, but that wis- 
dom cannot exist on a low plane of sentiment any more 
than a hyena can comprehend human society. A few 
words spoken in ancient times from the high sphere 
of which I speak are sacred to humanity to-day, while 
myriads of volumes filled with intellectual activities 
on a lower plane are entirely dead; and much of what 
is highly intellectual to-day must die also, because it 
is shallow and false as are all things below the normal 
plane of humanity. In that higher sphere of conscious- 
ness, all things are delightful and pure — partaking of 
perfection and eternity — hence its expression is ever 
sweet and strong and graceful, and moves with ease 
in the harmonious flow of poetry, which comes to the 
poet in his moments of ecstasy, when he seems to 
breathe the atmosphere of heaven, and which flows 
unbidden from lips that move with inspiration. 

" Poetry (said a great poet) is indeed something divine. It is at 
once the centre and circumference of knowledge, it is that which 
comprehends all science and that to which all science must be 
referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other 
systems of thought. It is that from which all spring, and that which 
adorns all, and that which if blighted denies the fruit and seed, and 
withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the succession 
of the cions of the Tree of Life. . . . What were the scenery of 
this beautiful universe which we inhabit, what were our consolations 
on this side of the grave, and what were our aspirations beyond it, 
if poetry did not descend to bring light and fire from those eternal 
regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not even 
soar ?" 

In this striking passage the word poetry is used 
with "poetic license," to express all of which poetry 



156 ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 

is the most pleasing expression. But that atmosphere 
of heaven, in breathing which men speak as angels 
and think in accordance with divine wisdom, was not 
for poets alone in the past, the present or the future, 
and has not been restricted to poetic forms in its con- 
veyance to mankind. It inspires alike the prophet, 
the religious teacher, the martyr-hero, and the philos- 
opher who reveals the divine wisdom in its relation to 
human life. And while science among the boulders 
and glaciers needs nothing but their forms for its 
inspiration, it enters a different field entirely when it 
comes up to man, in which sphere it is a presumptuous 
intruder unless it be washed from the soiling of earthly 
animalism and arrayed in the reverence and love 
which are the -raiment of philosophy, and without 
which there is no true comprehension of man or of 
God, and no capacity to comprehend and guide the 
evolution of humanity in its Godward progress — which 

IS EDUCATION. 

The world's mistake for ages has been the mistake 
of infancy and ignorance— seeing only the most appar- 
ent and superficial things, neglecting all that lies be- 
yond the surface. 

As the soul holds its intercourse with all things by 
the intellectual faculties and external senses, they have 
attracted universal attention, and the mysterious mov- 
ing powers which constitute the real character and 
life of all psychic being have been neglected, over- 
looked, or unknown. 

Psychology, from Plato to the beginning of the 
present century, has been almost exclusively a consid- 
eration of the cogitative faculties instead of the con- 
trolling elements of humanity, and even the sturdy 
protest of Reid has not abolished this sciolism. 

Education has been based upon the same superficial 
conception, dealing only with the external or intel- 
lectual manifestations, and has less of the ethical and 
physical to-day than it had among the Greeks. 

When we grasp the entire nature of man, we per- 
ceive that in addition to the external intellect which 
is akin to the senses, he has a spiritual, religious, or 



ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 157 

ethical nature, which partakes of the divine and is 
akin to the heavenly life, which is the seat of his hap- 
piness, the means by which he imparts happiness to 
others, and is the vitalizing element of his own life as 
w T ell as the fountain of life and happiness to all — for 
the divine benignity flows out to all men through the 
heavenly elements of the human soul, of which the 
divine is the indwelling principle. This is, indeed, the 
life and light of humanity, without which all would 
soon be extinguished in the blackness of night and 
nonentity. 

In addition to this beneficent and illuminating 
power, which all other powers serve, and which is the 
very end and aim of human existence, we have certain 
practical moving ambitions and executive impulses, 
by which all results are achieved, and a certain physi- 
ological apparatus for its use. 

These four elements of humanity- — the intellectual, 
the divine, the executive, and the animal — all need the 
culture of a true education, but the divine, or ethical, 
is the pre-eminent element, for which the others were 
created as its servants; and though all four elements 
are essentially necessary, the ethical is the most neces- 
sary, the most important, and the one which we can 
least afford to neglect. Therefore ethical education 
is the supreme need of humanity, and is the object to 
which all schools and colleges should be devoted, 
since it is the ethical education of the individual which 
fixes his true rank in the innumerable spheres of 
God's universe. 

This has been clearly perceived by all really great 
sages and saints, and above all was it realized and 
perceived by Jesus Christ, though very few of his fol- 
lowers have realized it as he did, and church organi- 
zations, busy with external ceremonial, have in former 
times been often as destitute of the divine elements as 
the colleges and governments. It illuminates and 
assists our conceptions when we discover that each of 
these four elements to be educated has its own special 
territory in the nervous matter of the body which 
contains all its psychic and vital powers ; not a cir- 



158 ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 

cumscribed and isolated territory for each (for human 
faculties are commingled in action), but a definite re- 
gion. The intellectual capacities belong to the front 
lobe of the brain in its frontal and lateral aspects, and 
to the anterior inferior part of the middle lobe. 

The ethical capacities occupy, as they should, the en- 
tire superior surface of the brain, blending on each side 
with the subordinate powers. The executive powers 
occupy the occipital region generally, and blend above 
in noble and strong impulses with the ethical — below 
with the physiological powers which control the body 
and occupy the base of the brain. These things I 
know by innumerable experiments, observations, and 
personal experience and consciousness, as well as I 
know any scientific fact, and have often demonstrated 
by experiment more than is here asserted. 

The position of the intellectual and moral powers 
in the brain renders it certain that the moral sustain 
the intellectual, for the superior organs of the brain 
determine the circulation upwards and thus invigorate 
the whole brain, while the frontal organs have no such 
tendency, but rather relax the force of the circulation 
and the energy of the temperament. This statement 
I must be allowed to make ex cathedra as a cerebral 
physiologist, for I do not propose in this volume to 
discuss any question of cerebral physiology. Its truth, 
however, will readily be recognized when we substi- 
tute for the cerebral organs the faculties which they 
manifest, which belong to the spiritual nature. No 
one will deny that hope, firmness, fortitude, decision, 
industry, enthusiasm and religious sentiment are 
qualities that invigorate the mind, and that mere in- 
tellectual exertion, unless sustained by these qualities, 
is exhaustive or debilitating. 

Hence the moral nature and upper part of the brain 
are essential to intellectual energy and success, and he 
is the most successful teacher who can inspire the 
greatest enthusiasm and earnestness, while any system 
of education which has no pleasure or enthusiasm in 
the pupil and no affection for his teacher or interest in 
his studies, must be a failure. 



ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 159 

I would not assert, however, that the common intel- 
lectual education has no moral power, for there is no 
purely intellectual education. Every school must 
necessarily enforce a certain degree of self-control, 
obedience, diligence, tranquillity, fidelity, and sense of 
duty, which gradually subdue the animal passions 
and produce an externally moral deportment. The 
common-school education certainly appears to dimin- 
ish crime. The major part of the crime in the New 
England States proceeds from that small portion of 
the population (about 7 per cent) which is illiterate. 
It may be because the illiterate become vicious, or be- 
cause the degraded and vicious grow up illiterate. 
Profligacy and degradation cause a neglect of educa- 
tion, and the neglect of education increases profligacy. 
It is said that 95 per cent of those arrested for crime 
in France during the twelve years ending in 1879, 
were of the illiterate classes. 

Regarding the culture of the ethical as the supreme 
purpose of education, I have already explained the 
chief method of culture by the voice of the pupil and 
the teacher, according to the law that sound controls 
the emotions. There are also two other important and 
greatly neglected laws — the law of pleasure and the 
law of action — laws upon which our educational sys- 
tems have long been trampling, and which require a 
revolution in educational methods. 

1st. As to the law of pleasure. — Pleasure and pain 
are the Divine instrumentalities for guiding and 
governing mankind. Pain is the inevitable punish- 
ment which arrests us in wrong-doing, warns us of 
error, and compels us to desist. Inflicted by Divine 
ordination (the laws of nature) it is unquestionably a 
Divine monition as to the laws that are to be obeyed. 
It punishes us for injuring our bodies, and compels us 
to take care of them. It punishes all violations of the 
law of health, and all neglect of duties. In violating 
the law of the Divine life, the ethical element, we are 
punished by the hostility of our fellows, and by our 
debasement, remorse, and loss of happiness. In 
violating the laws of the practical energies we are 



l6o ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 

punished by mortifying failures, loss or disaster. In 
violating the law of the intellectual nature we are 
punished by ignorance and mental obfuscation, lead- 
ing to falsities and calamity. 

The whole history of the world is a history of calam- 
ities produced by violated laws. War, pestilence, 
crime, poverty and insanity have scourged all nations 
in the past and present, and will continue to scourge 
them until the Divine laws are obeyed. 

The law of pleasure is this, that the normal and 
beneficent exercise of all our faculties shall be pleas- 
ant — the abnormal and injurious, unpleasant or painful. 
The pleasure or happiness resulting from normal 
action of the faculties generally, invigorates the ethical 
faculties, the nature of which is to enjoy and to diffuse 
happiness. The disturbance, unhappiness or pain 
resulting from violating the laws of the faculties, op- 
presses the ethical nature which is all brightness and 
joy, and stimulates the anti-ethical, gloomy and evil 
impulses which debase the entire character. Harsh 
and cruel treatment stimulates every evil element in 
our nature and overpowers the good, but happiness 
produces a bright elevated condition of the soul and a 
desire and capacity to diffuse the same happy con- 
dition to others. 

The normal exercise of the intellectual faculties is 
delightful, and by this delightful influence invigorates 
the ethical nature as well as the intellectual powers. 
It is therefore an essential matter in ethical education 
that all intellectual instruction should be agreeable of 
interesting, and should not be fatiguing, disgusting, or 
painful. Repulsive tasks enforced with tyrannical 
harshness are positively demoralizing, and would 
counteract the effect of ethical instruction. The poet 
Wordsworth recognized this association between 
pleasure and intellectual progress. He said, " We 
have no knowledge, that is, no general principles 
drawn from the contemplation of particular facts, but 
what has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us 
by pleasure alone. The man of science, the chemist 
and mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts 



ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 161 

they may have had to struggle with, know and feel 
this." 

It is this pleasing exercise, this reception of love and 
wisdom, which nourishes and builds up the brain as 
man's whole life is nourished and sustained by the 
Divine influx into his interior. Wretched is the fate 
of children to whom no love is given; their moral na- 
ture is utterly starved and their character for life 
debased, as we may see in their expressionless faces — 
a degradation similar to that which comes from the 
lack of nourishment for the body. Prof. Baldwin, a 
commissioner who investigated this subject in Ireland, 
says: 

"For many years I have had abundant opportunities of seeing 
how the want of food and clothing affects the attendance of scholars 
in the schools of this country. I have myself observed again and 
again the fearful physiological effects which result to adults from 
indifferent sustenance in youth. When the tissues are insufficiently 
supplied with nourishment the inevitable end is mental and physical 
inferiority, and this inferiority, it must not be forgotten, becomes 
hereditary. Ireland is now suffering very heavily from the neglect 
of this plain and elementary truth in the past." 

Under the false and harsh theories of education that 
have prevailed, schools have been to a great extent 
anti-ethical or debasing institutions, developing by 
disagreeable, unintelligible tasks and severe punish- 
ments and upbraidings a spirit of discontent, gloom, 
deception, malice, and rebellion. 

We see the opposite picture when the mother or the 
qualified teacher collects the little ones and tells them 
an interesting story of history, biography, geography 
or natural history. We see in their bright eyes how 
active their minds are, and how predominant are the 
amiable qualities. 

Ail the exercises of a school should be attractive, 
and if as attractive as they should be, no urgeney or 
authority will be required to secure the attendance of 
the children or maintain their faithful attention. 

No authority would be needed in controlling the 
amiable Japanese children, who enjoy the instruction 
of the noble's school in Tokio. At that institution 



1 62 ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 

there is a physical map of the whole country, or rather 
a model, three or four hundred feet long, in the court 
attached to the school building. This model is made 
of rock and turf, and has a border of pebbles looking 
like water at a little distance. Latitude and longitude 
on this map are shown by telegraph wires. Every 
mountain, river and inlet is exhibited with minute and 
wonderful fidelity. The positions of cities are shown 
by tablets. 

This attractive teaching, so beneficial to the moral 
nature, so effective in putting an end to school dis- 
order, must necessarily be mainly oral; and fortunately 
this oral teaching, which combines in the highest 
degree the moral and intellectual, is adapted to large 
numbers, and may therefore be most economical. 

The contented and happy children who are listening 
to a good oral teacher need no authority or punish- 
ment to keep them in order. They are continually 
growing in thoughtfulness, mental brightness and 
amiability. Their pleasing emotions invigorate the 
intellect, and the entire satisfaction of the intellect 
animates the best emotions. This is true education — 
the antithesis of the false. 

The idea of stern and gloomy minds, that educational 
processes should be laborious, and that assisting the 
student as by a literal translation, instead of compel- 
ling him to spend time and fatigue himself in handling 
a dictionary and guessing at the possible construction 
of a phrase or sentence, would enfeeble his min$ by 
depriving him of rugged labor, arises from a false con- 
ception of the nature of exercise as distinguished from 
fatigue, and of the difference between development 
and exhaustion. Exertion is certainly necessary to 
development, but the exertion that develops is success- 
ful and exhilarating exertion. The overcoming of ob- 
stacles gives the power to go on in overcoming them 
by the exhilaration and self-confidence which it im- 
parts, but exertion which is tedious, disappointing, 
and often baffled — which keeps the intellectual facul- 
ties, not under the stimulus of incoming knowledge, 
but in the dull necessity of waiting for comprehension, 



ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 163 

suffering from the vexation of disappointment, and the 
depressing feeling of ignorance and stupidity as we 
fail to comprehend what is before us — is a positive 
injury to the mind, an inverted education which tends 
to stultification and dulness of both the intellectual 
and the moral powers, and creates a permanent dislike 
to everything associated with books. It is said that 
the boys of Naples were decidedly averse to contrib- 
uting to maintain the monument of Virgil, because the 
study of his Latin poems was associated in their 
minds with recollections so unpleasant. In Mexico, the 
youngest children of the higher classes are still kept 
at school between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., and, says a cor- 
respondent, " It is pitiful to see hundreds of wee bits 
of w r eary children returning from school at sunset or 
in the twilight. The result of this system is that chil- 
dren have a settled horror of books, and probably the 
reason Mexican ladies read so little is associated with 
their purgatorial school-days. If you speak to a young 
girl here of reading for amusement she seems sur- 
prised." 

Even old Roger Ascham perceived the importance 
of these principles in teaching Latin, and says in his 
" Scholemaster," recommending pleasant exercises: 
"And pleasure allureth love; love hath lust to labor; 
labor always attaineth his purpose." 

So Comenius early in the 17th century insisted that 
children should be taught only that which they desired 
to learn, and taught by appealing to the senses. 

That which is acquired with pleasure and activity 
of the emotions is retained as a permanent acquisi- 
tion. We never forget the most exciting and impor- 
tant event of our lives, but forget with great facility 
incidents which excited no interest, no animation or 
pleasure, and especially those associated with dulness or 
mental depression. Our feeblest mental condition is 
that of dreaming, hence there are few who retain any 
definite recollection of their dreams. For a similar 
reason school-lessons fade out of the memory, and 
when a boy quits school he has already forgotten 
much of his acquisitions, and often suffers the still 



164 ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION, 

greater loss that his literary education has been 
ruined since he has acquired a permanent aversion to 
the literary pursuit of knowledge, and remains a man 
of limited information on all subjects beyond the cur- 
rent matters of society and business. 

Mr. Herbert Spencer expressed very properly the 
truth in reference to intellectual education (though 
without perceiving the ethical element) when he said: 

"Experience is daily showing with greater clearness that there 
is always a method to be found productive of interest, even of de- 
light, and it ever turns out that this is the method proved by all 
other tests to be the right one." 

Upon which the Rev. R. H. Quick, of Cambridge, re- 
marks: 

"As far as I have had the means of judging I have found that 
the majority of teachers reject this principle. If you ask them 
why, most of them will tell you that it is impossible to make 
school-work interesting to children. A large number also hold 
that it is not desirable, 

"Boys' minds are frequently dwarfed and their interest in intel- 
lectual pursuits blighted by the practice of employing the first years 
of their school-life in learning by heart things which it is quite im- 
possible for them to understand or care for. 

"When the boys have been taught on this system for two or 
three years their teacher complains that they are stupid and inat- 
tentive, and that so long as they can say a thing by heart they 
never trouble themselves to understand it. 

" School- teaching has been a failure. And a failure it must re- 
main until boys can be got to work with a will, or, in other words, 
to feel interest in the subject taught." 

Such an education establishes the habits of igno- 
rance and justifies the remark of Mr. Quick: 

" Most Englishmen are at a loss how to make any use of lei- 
sure. If a man has no time for thinking, no fondness for reading, 
and is without a hobby, what good shall his leisure do him ? He 
will only pass it in insipid gossip. That this is so in many cases 
is a proof to my mind of the utter failure of ordinary education." 

A still more signal evidence is the ennui leading to 
suicide of men oppressed by leisure. All this gloom 
disappears when we introduce the ethical by a loving 
teacher who makes the school-room a place of pleas- 






ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 165 

ure. A teacher full of knowledge and full of love 
delights in imparting knowledge as a mother loves to 
talk to her children. He engages his pupils in con- 
versation, and when he can lay aside text-books he 
delights to pour out his knowledge as an oral instruc- 
tor. There is an inexhaustible charm in oral descrip- 
tion which enables the Japanese story-teller or lecturer 
to assemble audiences in the open air and receive im- 
mediate pay for the pleasure he has given them. 

Oral instruction is therefore the inevitable method 
whenever the religion of Jesus shall illuminate the 
prison-house which has been called a school. When- 
ever the teacher is inspired with this divine element 
he ceases to be the tyrant compelling repugnant la- 
bor. Without this inspiration all the methods adopt- 
ed in teaching have been tyrannical and unnatural, 
imposing the greatest amount of repugnant labor with 
the least benefit, as has been conspicuous in the study 
of dead languages enforced on those to whom they 
were simply useless and whom they tended rather to 
disqualify for a useful industrial life. 

Our accomplished minister at London, Mr. J. R. 
Lowell, said in an address before the Workingmen's 
College in London: 

" He learned Italian entirely by his interest in Dante, and if they 
wished to learn a language he would advise them to take some 
great work. They would only need a dictionary; they would not 
need a grammar. His own experience was that nine men out of 
ten learned a language better in this way than by lea7'ning the gram- 
mar. They were saved an infinite deal of drudgery, and also an 
infinite deal of time often spent on grammar to no purpose. If 
they wished to understand a great master they would soon find out 
the distinction between his indicative and subjunctive, and they 
would be led to it in an easier and more agreeable way than by the 
study of grammar." 

My own personal experience is similar to Mr. 
Lowell's. But pedantic pedagogy has always pre- 
ferred the use of rules to giving directly the knowledge 
sought, preferring grammar and dictionary drudgery 
to the interlinear translation or vocal instruction 
which is the only easy natural method, a method by 



1 66 ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 

which the youngest children master all languages 
without labor in the home circle. The same remarks 
are applicable to the English language, which is ac- 
quired in perfection without a single lesson of any- 
kind in the home circle of the educated, but is never 
acquired in the school study of grammar by those 
who have not such society ; and yet this factitious af- 
fair, the study of grammar, has been so prominent 
that our common schools are called grammar schools. 

If every spelling-book, grammar and arithmetic of 
the old style were destroyed by a bonfire, educa- 
tion would be assisted. Correct reading, writing and 
speaking would then be acquired by natural methods 
and arithmetic by mental processes. At Quincy, 
Mass., where the natural methods have been adopted, 
the gain in time is claimed to be a hundred per cent, 
and in St. Louis there has been a similar gain in learn- 
ing to read by more natural methods. 

In schools as they have been, nearly or quite one 
half of the pupil's time was occupied in depressing 
tasks which exhausted the whole brain in the worrying 
exercise of the least important faculties. The entire 
process of that book study enforced necessarily by the 
rod (and creating by disgust and rebelliousness a ne- 
cessity for the rod) has been a demoralizing process for 
the young, with few compensating intellectual advan- 
tages. The effort to ascertain the meaning of the 
arbitrary characters printed in the text-book, and to 
realize some intelligible idea therefrom, produced 
weariness and disgust, without the stimulus of clear 
knowledge. How irresistibly tempting to the impris- 
oned lad was the forest with its flowers and birds and 
free companionship, and how much brighter the 
minds and spirits of those who escaped the control of 
the pedagogue. 

How much greater the intellectual stimulus of great 
undertakings and the social or public collision of 
minds than is ever realized in schools. 

But intellectual exertion at the best, without moral 
inspiration, has no elevating influence on the character, 
and develops a class of men who do not personally 






ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. \6j 

command our highest admiration.* Hence the re- 
mark of Hazlitt that great authors should be " read, 
not heard." But the ethical element gives a vigor to 
the brain and a brightness to its manifestations which 
command our respect, however limited the natural en- 
dowment of intellect. The expression of a hero is im- 
pressive, and there is a charming mental activity in 
women of whom we may say, in antithesis to authors, 
that they should be heard rather than read. 

How signally deficient have been both primary 
education (controlled by the rod) and collegiate edu- 
cation (controlled by authority) in that essential 
ethical element which gives a healthy vitality. This 
was candidly admitted in the Harvard oration of 
Charles Francis Adams (1873), wri ° said: 

" At such places enthusiasm becomes difficult, if not impossible. 
If lighted at all the fire must be spread by the teacher among mem- 
bers working together. In the days of my youth at this university 
I cannot disguise my impression that the method was formal, me- 
chanical, and cold. No scholar dreamed of sympathy with him in 
his difficulties, or regarded his exercise otherwise than as a task, 
for the failure to perform which he lost credit, or at best won a 
step over his comrades by success. In either event the teacher 
looked as cold as if he were Minos or Rhadamanthus. In my 
mind the true maxim is the old one of Horace, applicable as freely 
to instruction as to the drama: 

Si vis me jlere, dolendum est 
Primum ipse iibi. 

*' A mighty loadstone is human sympathy! I say this not with 
any design to reflect upon the absence of it in the mode of instruc- 

* " What Ails the Pulpit ? — It cannot be denied that there is 
a somewhat extensively felt doubt about the effectiveness of the 
pulpit for the evangelization of the community. Much of the dif- 
ficulty is believed to result from the present mode of training min- 
isters. The severe studies through which they have to pass, and 
the somewhat unnatural conditions of college life, undoubtedly tell 
unfavorably on the health and strength, physical and consequently 
mental, of many of them. They finish their studies and their 
health together, and go out to a work that requires a whole man, 
with a tendency more or less pronounced to consumption or dys- 
pepsia. Nothing that colleges give can compensate for broken 
health. But this is not all. There is an artificiality and manner- 
ism among preachers fresh from writing trial-sermons that is very 
disheartening to those who want earnest heart-work in pulpit ut- 
terances. " — N. Y. Witness. 



1 68 ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 

tion pursued at this day, but rather with a conviction that a great 
change has been going on since my time, which only needs expan- 
sion to supersede all that may remain of the old habits." 

The New York Times said in 1881: 

" All who know the old methods in Yale know that there was 
never any approach of the minds of Professor and student in the 
class-room except in the > lectures/ which really belong to the 
other plan." 

When Carlyle became Lord Rector of Edinburgh 
University he recalled with sadness the utterly heart- 
less coldness with which he had been treated when he 
was a student. 

" Very little help," he said, " did I get from anybody in those 
years, and, as I may say, no sympathy at all in all this old town. 
And if there was any difference it was found least where I might 

most have hoped for it. There was Professor . For years I 

attended his lectures in all weathers and all hours. Many and 
many a time when the class was called together it was found to 
consist of one individual, to wit, of him now speaking; and, still 
oftener, when others were present, the only person who had at all 
looked into the lesson assigned was the same humble individual. 
I remember no instance which elicited any note or comment from 
that instructor. He once requested me to translate a mathematic- 
al paper, and I worked through it the whole of one Sunday, and it 
was laid before him, and it was received without remark or thanks. 
After such long years I came to part with him and to get my cer- 
tificate. Without a word he wrote on a bit of paper: ' I certify 
that Mr. Thomas Carlyle has been in my class during his college 
course and has made good progress in his studies.' Then he rang 
a bell and ordered a servant to open the front door for me. Not the 
slightest sign that I was a person whom he could have distin- 
guished in any crowd." 

Such was the system; and if Carlyle had been an 
ethical philosopher, or understood what was due to 
the cordiality of human intercourse, he had a grand 
opportunity of protesting against cold-heartedness and 
demanding an ethical revolution in educational sys- 
tems, with a power which would have been felt 
throughout civilization. But cold selfishness is pro- 
longed by the law of preservation of force; he who 
has grown up under a heart-freezing system becomes 
himself too selfish or misanthropic to seek to intro- 



ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 1 69 

duce anything better. Hence even in so enlightened 
a city as Boston corporal punishment continues in the 
schools, and the Superintendent says in a late report : 

" Teachers of both sexes use personal violence with their pupils 
in such forms and such frequency that the facts if published would 
cause unpleasantness. Some put children into painful and even 
dangerous positions; some shake them at times with such rough- 
ness as to tear their clothing, while many still apply the rattan as 
freely as if it were a feather, and strike not merely the hand but 
the head and body. Within the last month or two some pit- 
eous cases have been reported to me by parents whose children 
had suffered. The monthly reports of some grammar-schools 
come in ringing with the echoes of blows." 

In France the barbarism of corporal punishment 
survives only in a few country schools. But in Can- 
ada in 1882 the matron of an orphan school was 
proved to have used mustard plasters ! as a mode of 
punishment, and the Rev, Abbe Verreau in a normal 
school severely caned a boy, holding his head between 
his legs and made him kneel down and lick the floor! 

The ethical elements are of two kinds (which, 
however, blend with each other), the energetic and the 
genial. In the former class we have will or decision, 
fortitude, perseverance, industry, patience, self-con- 
trol, temperance, heroism, etc.; in the latter, benevo- 
lence, faith, sympathy, candor, courtesy, reverence, 
love, friendship, hope, religion, etc. — justice, patriotism 
and prudence being intermediate. 

All of these elements are necessary as a support to 
the intellect. The former give more power, but the 
latter also give additional activity and rectitude of 
action to the mind by giving larger and brighter 
views and that greater impressibility by truth for want 
of which the most fashionable science and philosophy 
of to-day is miserably dry, hard, barren and faithless; 
its maximum gloom being visible in the pessimism of 
Schopenhauer and Hartmann. 

We may realize the paramount value of the moral 
elements by considering the ruinous effects of their 
deficiency. Without a moderate endowment of will, 
fortitude, perseverance, temperance, and industry, the 



170 ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION, 

character is utterly worthless and imbecile. The to- 
tal absence of such faculties amounts to moral destruc- 
tion — a state of utter dementia or something worse. 
The genial elements are almost as essential. Without 
love, friendship and benevolence, man becomes a 
wretched misanthrope unfit for society; without hope 
he is paralyzed by despair. Under such influences his 
opinions on all matters relating to his fellow-beings 
would be viciously and malignantly false, and the 
motives to any noble intellectual effort would be lack- 
ing. The energizing power of enthusiasm, love, friend- 
ship, and all the social sentiments, is too familiarly 
known to need illustration, and the more thoroughly 
we study practical psychology the more clearly appear 
the importance and necessity of all and each of the 
higher sentiments to our intellectual efficiency and 
soundness of judgment. 

All the world's false philosophies originate in various 
ethical defects in their authors, and tend to propagate 
similar ethical defects in their readers. The writers 
who would lead the public, knowing nothing of an 
anthropology capable of determining the normal 
structure of their own minds and the extent to which 
they may be abnormal, naturally assume their abnor- 
mal modes of thought as the standard of truth, and 
attempt to propagate the falsehoods into which they 
have fallen. A large portion of our literature has em- 
anated from men upon the verge of suicide, another 
from men profoundly selfish, another from those pro- 
foundly egotistic, self-sufficient, and indolent, and an- 
other from those who would be cruel tyrants if they 
had the opportunity. 

Our literature is like a quarantine station deserted 
by its officers, at which every victim of disease is free 
to propagate its contagion. 

When reverence, modesty, faith and liberality are 
lacking, a pragmatic self-sufficiency seeks to over- 
whelm the public mind with its own narrow and dog- 
matic theories. Hence the enormous issue of books 
with which each century strives to fasten upon pos- 
terity a portion of its own darkness. Minds unen- 



ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 17I 

lightened by moral education, and lacking the genial 
influences of hope, faith, and love, are constitutionally 
hostile to all real progress and to every great re- 
former. 

Men destitute of the enlightenment which comes from 
love, and the depth which comes from the reverential 
element of religion, have sprinkled through our litera- 
ture the shallowest and most pedantic conceptions of 
psychology and morals. When the venerable Professor 
White of Union Seminary asked a pompous young man 
in what the happiness of heaven consisted, the reply was, 
" In a proper balance of the intellect and sensibilities. " 
Though the answer was laughed at, it cannot be more 
absurd than many of the dicta of pedantic writers; in- 
deed it was a harmless folly compared to the dicta of 
a metaphysical college president at the West who made 
the shedding of blood either of men or animals the 
most conspicuous and important part in all the rela- 
^- tions between God and man. 

Another enormous evil of our immoral education is 
its failure to develop reverence, modesty and docility, 
and consequent development of unrestrained prag- 
matic loquacity — a national vice of American society. 
Ignorance, selfishness and audacity rush to the press 
and the rostrum, each eager to be heard, none caring 
to listen. Society is noisy, the press teems with mat- 
ter not worth writing, and every legislative assembly 
- find-sltself -Incapable of doing its duty in consequence 
of the enormous loquacity of the majority of the mem- 
bers. Great thinkers are not loquacious or hasty of 
speech. Loquacity was not a characteristic of Jesus, 
and those who fail to imitate him are recognized in 
their long prayers. Profound reverential thought in- 
clines to silence, and does not invade a neighbor's ears 
without important reasons. Robert Hall is reported 
to have said, when some one asked him how many dis- 
courses a minister might get up in a week: " If he is 
a deep thinker and great condenser, he may get up 
one; if he is an ordinary man, two; but if he is an 
ass, sir, he will produce half a dozen." 

The animal impulse of loquacity is often a great 



172 ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 

social nuisance. The voice of a rude nature disturbs 
the harmony of a social circle. The freedom of speech 
interferes with the freedom of the hearer. The prag- 
matic talker oppresses everybody, however well he may 
talk, for he pays no respect to their equal social 
rights. Eminent men are tolerated in this, but many 
who have no especial merit become great bores, and 
are scarcely ever conscious of the fact. Madame de 
Stael was a brilliant talker, but her loquacity tired her 
friends and repelled the women, while Madame Reca- 
mier, who was a kind, appreciative listener, attracted 
everybody. It is the ethical nature that listens and 
grows wise; the animal nature babbles and preserves 
its identity without improvement. The philosopher 
leads among enlightened listeners; he is silenced 
among the babblers. I do not mean that deep wisdom 
and loquacity are entirely incompatible, but merely 
that they are as opposite elements as religion and sen- 
suality, or patience and temper, and that growth in 
wisdom and the higher virtues moderates loquacity. 

We need moral education to develop modesty, to 
silence this Babel, to make men willing to listen with 
deference; and we need it still more to make men 
thinkers instead of talkers, to make them willing to 
learn, willing to be instructed, to break the fetters of 
stolid conservatism, and to render the human intellect 
productive. Every college should be a focus not only 
of learning, but of intellect, and therefore a centre of 
progress, originating science itself and welcoming 
science from all other sources. This truth was recog- 
nized (where one would least expect to have seen it 
welcomed) in an address by Dr. Yale to the New York 
Academy of Medicine, in which were the words, 
" Every institution of learning should have a double 
function, the teaching of that which is known, and the 
investigation of that which is unknown." If the functions 
of the Faculty were determined by these two spheres 
of labor, the investigation of the boundless unknown 
would require far more attention than the cultivation 
of the known. This has been the undeveloped func- 
tion of colleges, a bud that has never blossomed and 



ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 173 

never can in the icy atmosphere of selfishness. Prof. 
Helmholtz, rector of the University of Berlin, has 
pointed out in his lectures recently published how very 
little has been accomplished at English universities by 
the enormous amounts expended in supporting more 
than a thousand fellowships ostensibly sustained for 
some form of intellectual progress. It is not amid the 
stagnant conservatism of universities that we can find 
the human mind fruitful of new thought and discov- 
ery. A single poor unrecognized genius struggling 
for his daily bread is often worth more to mankind 
than an entire university. The foremost steps of hu- 
man progress have been the work of unbefriended 
genius. How often is the poor unrecognized genius 
frozen or crushed, if possible, by the educated corps of 
conservatives moulded and educated by colleges to 
hold fast in their ignorance as well as in their knowl- 
edge.* Hence the regret of Harvey that he had pub- 

* There is no better illustration of this than in the attempts of 
George Stephenson to introduce the locomotive for railway-travel. 
The opposition that he encountered from the powerful and learned 
was so absurd that it sounds to-day like the objections of a profes- 
sional humorist rather than the arguments of educated men. They 
were educated, however— educated obstructives — and a very similar 
education is still given in colleges. Mr. Smiles, in his life of George 
Stephenson, says: 

" At first Stephenson stood almost alone in his belief in the 
powers of the locomotive-engine. His experiments were carried 
on in silence and obscurity. They were quite unknown to the 
journalists, historians, and writers of the day. The great work was 
done without any help from authors and orators. He never con- 
tented himself with dwelling in the regions of speculation and ab- 
straction. He worked energetically in giving life to a dormant 
principle and practical realization to an abstract proposition. Yet 
the facts which he developed by experience were laughed at as 
'moonshine.' There is something tragic in witnessing the deter- 
mined hostility which obstructed his efforts. The whole prejudice of 
the scientific world opposed him. The civil engineers would not 
admit his facts. They would not even inquire into his experi- 
ments. Everything that he proposed to do was demonstrated to 
be impossible. The civil engineers declared that it was impossi- 
ble to drive a locomotive at the rate of twelve miles an hour. The 
engine would be driven back by the wind. If it travelled, it 
would be beaten by the canal-boats. But it would never go at all. 
The smooth wheels could never ' bite ' upon smooth rails. The 



174 ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 

lished his discoveries, and the still more bitter regret 
of the great American inventor Oliver Evans, who felt 
so keenly the injustice he received as to direct on his 
death-bed the destruction of his numerous drawings 
and models, that they might not tempt another into 



wheels would merely turn round and round, and the whole ma- 
chine would stand still. It was also declared to be impossible to 
make a railroad over Chat Moss without stopping short at the bot- 
tom. The whole thing was declared to be ' impossible.' And yet 
the impossible things were done. The impossible locomotive was 
run, not only at twelve, but at fifty miles an hour, and the impos- 
sible railroad was made from Liverpool to Manchester over the 
centre of Chat Moss. The Legislature baffled him. They reported 
in favor of road tramways, but resisted railway locomotives. They 
defeated the promotors of the early railways again and again. At 
length railways were introduced, and, like all good works, they en- 
riched and blessed the nation. The success of the railway locomo- 
tives grew in the main from the mind of George Stephenson. The 
cow boy, the picker, the plugman, the engineman, the pump- 
curer, the brakesman, the colliery enginewright, is truly the par- 
ent of the great railway system of the world." 

The true parent of the railway system is not Mr. Stephenson, 
who introduced it, but a greater genius, Oliver Evans, of America, 
who invented the high-pressure engine and steam-locomotive be- 
fore 1786, but could not introduce his invention between Philadel- 
phia and New York, though he offered to construct the locomo- 
tive at his own risk. American stolidity was then as immovable as 
the British. <4 The time will come (said Evans) when people will 
travel in stages moved by steam-engines from one city to another 
almost as fast as birds fly." Evans estimated his invention as 
worth a thousand million dollars, and no one will doubt it to-day. 
But why could it not be introduced ? why did he, dying in 1819, leave 
it to be realized by posterity on railroads ? Had we not then a 
supply of colleges, of educated men, scientists and engineers ! 
Why were they all as stolid and incapable of reasoning on novel 
conceptions as the medical contemporaries of Harvey? The only 
reason is that our educational system has been a system of stultifi- 
cation which, like the Chinese system, left the reasoning faculty un- 
developed in the pupils as it was undeveloped in their teachers. 
Evans was regarded by many as a lunatic, and the same charge 
was more seriously brought against his contemporary inventor, 
John Fitch, who invented the steam-carriage and steam-boat in 
1785 and ran the steamboat successfully in 1787. Notwithstand- 
ing his actual success, Fitch was as unsuccessful as Evans in over- 
coming the stolidity of his contemporaries. The biography of Fitch 
is a sad story of the martyrdom of the inventor, which must be 
charged against a false education. 



ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 175 

labors of invention and improvement which had been 
to him a source of anxiety and sorrow. Still more 
painful was the experience of his compeer John Fitch 
in attempting the introduction of steam-navigation in 
1786, and such has ever been the history of progress 
in all ages; such must it continue to be until colleges 
shall educate the liberalizing faculties which are the 
source of original thought and invention. They have 
not yet learned how to do this, and to specify exactly 
how in their conservatism they are to-day repressing 
progress, hindering investigation, and holding fast in 
ignorance, would not enlighten them, for the authori- 
tative and learned conservative in the seat of power 
has never been in the past enlightened by an appeal 
to reason, neither can it be done to-day. Opinions 
derived from prescription or inheritance, or inspired 
by congenital narrowness of mind, were not formed 
by reason, and are beyond its power. The supersti- 
tions of literature and science are as impregnable as 
those of national religions, and around all established 
forms of belief on all subjects bigotry has erected 
ramparts which it is dangerous to approach except 
under its own flag; and so intimately has this bigotry 
been incorporated in the human mind by inheritance 
and education, that even the innovator who has dis- 
covered an error and wishes to introduce a truth, 
retaining his own share of the original bigotry intro- 
duces additional discord by his fanatical utterances 
and imperious rejection of valuable knowledge ob- 
tained by his predecessors. The antagonistic bigotries 
of conservatism and reform must prolong sectarian 
partisanship until instruction in the art of dispassion- 
ate reason and the process of original thought shall 
give to both parties the coinciding accuracy of mathe- 
matical investigation in the higher realm of coincid- 
ing affection, faith, hope, and love, which annihilate 
bigotry and discord. 

The whole atmosphere of education should be that 
of loving warmth — it should embody in manners that 
which is so sweetly expressed in vocal music, which 
energizes every genial sentiment, brightens the imagi- 



176 ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION, 

nation, strengthens hope, courage and perseverance, 
and sustains us against the fatigue of drier studies, 
which teachers have not yet learned to make interest- 
ing. 

Studies which require close, protracted or fatiguing 
attention should never be prolonged to actual fatigue. 
A rational system proceeds on the sound psycho-phy- 
siological principle that fatigue, pain and disgust are 
always injurious, and that all healthy invigorating ex- 
ercises which are pleasant are also beneficial — pain 
being Nature's sentinel, by which she warns us off 
from what is injurious, and pleasure or happiness her 
persuasive monitor, by which we are attracted to what 
is beneficial. 

All beneficial exercises are agreeable, and the old 
repugnance to pleasant education is based entirely on 
the erroneous supposition that pleasure implies indo- 
lence, and that there can be no very vigorous exertion 
when there is no fatiguing toil or drudgery to task 
our fortitude. But in fact much greater exertion is 
made when an exercise is pleasant and interesting than 
when it is monotonous and repulsive, and made with 
less fatigue or exhaustion. The interesting and diver- 
sified exercises of a gymnasium give a finer physical 
development than any monotonous and wearisome 
labor. The exercise of dancing is borne by young 
ladies with pleasure when the same amount of exer- 
tion in mere labor would be considered a hardship. 
The toils of a hunter pursuing the fox or the buffalo, 
or the soldier pursuing a retreating enemy, are far 
greater than those of a day-laborer, but borne with 
more cheerfulness. 

For any effort to be beneficial it should be success- 
ful and not baffling. He who runs at full speed over 
a well-arranged track improves his locomotive powers, 
but he who toils and slips along over a combination 
of rocks, ice, snow and mud, fatigues himself without 
benefit. Thus, in intellectual labors, success is ex- 
hilarating and increases our vigor, but when baffled, 
puzzled or defeated at almost every step, the intel- 
lect becomes confused and stultified, energy and en- 



ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 17/ 

thusiasm disappear, and the mind is actually debili- 
tated. 

Thousands of unfortunate pupils, victims of the old 
system, have realized these truths in every month, or 
week, or sometimes every day of their entire pupilage, 
and Mr. Bristed, in his book on English Universities, 
describes the prostrating fatigue, exhaustion and 
impairment of intellect which he experienced in go- 
ing through the Cambridge course of mathematics. 
" It was hard (he says) to keep one's spirits up under 
the mathematical burden. The feeling was exactly 
like that of eating sawdust. My mind could extract 
neither pleasure nor nutriment from the food pre- 
sented to it. And yet this work did not occupy more 
than four hours a day of my time, some days not so 
much. But those few hours daily exhausted me more 
than twice the time spent in congenial studies could 
have done ... it was necessary to abstain from any 
hard and systematic work during the rest of the day." 
" Not only is the progress in this uncongenial study 
slow, disagreeable and elusive, but so far from its 
strengthening the mind of the scholar for more appro- 
priate employments, it actually weakens and unfits 
it. Fagging at mathematics not only fatigues but 
hopelessly muddles an unmathematical man, so that 
he is in no state for any mental exertion. It was the 
general complaint of men who had been working up 
mathematics for the Trinity scholarship, or going 
through a longer probation for the Senate Houses, 
that it took several days to recover the spring and 
tone of their minds when they set to work on classics 
again." The enfeeblement of the intellect was not 
the only evil effect of this repugnant labor, as it pro- 
duced even moral depression and injury; "the petu- 
laace and irritability thus engendered (he says) were 
matters of notoriety." Alas, how many millions of 
young students have been forced through this deteri- 
orating process without a suspicion in their teachers 
that it was wrong or that anything better was possi- 
ble. Under the old regime, only daring enthusiasts 
like Pestalozzi could make any material change. But 



178 ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 

so glaring are the evils, that medical science is de- 
manding a change. At a recent meeting of German 
physicians of the insane, the director of the Bruns- 
wick State Lunatic Asylum maintained that " much 
of the increase of insanity in Germany ,, is attributa- 
ble to the excessive amount of work imposed upon 
the pupils in the national schools. Not only has the 
brain been injured, but the sense of vision and the 
eyes have been disastrously affected by a system of 
education which substitutes text-books for the natural 
oral method. The statistics of this evil were con- 
densed by the New York Sun in the following state- 
ment: 

Near-sightedness is increasing in Germany at an astonishing 
rate. Thirty eye-doctors recently examined the vision of 40,000 
pupils in schools of all degrees. They conclude that near-sighted- 
ness rarely exists at birth or at less than five years of age, and in 
village schools the near-sighted form only one per cent of the at- 
tendance. In the city schools they constitute 5 to 11 per cent, in 
the schools next above 10 to 24 per cent, in the next grade of 
schools 20 to 40 per cent, and in the highest 30 to 50. A physician 
of Tubingen found in a body of 700 theological students 73 per 
cent myopic, and Prof. Virchow recently said in the German Par- 
liament that 95 out of every 100 of the medical students are un- 
able to see what lies before them." 

If such be the penalty for German scholarship, 
either the scholarship should be relinquished, or the 
text-book system abandoned for the ethical system in 
which the teacher comes into direct contact with the 
soul of the pupil, imparting the vigor of his own mind 
and constitution by sympathy, instead of undermining 
life by task-work. 

Dr. Herman Cohn, of Breslau, found that less than 
two per cent were near-sighted in the primary schools, 
but 26 per cent in the higher schools, and more than 
two thirds in the 410 students examined at the Breslau 
University. 

But the confinement injures the spine as well as the 
eyes, by the position assumed on the imperfect school 
seats. Dr. Frey, of an orthopedic establishment at 
Zurich, attributes three fourths of his cases to the in- 
jurious effects of the schools, producing distortion of the 



ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 179 

spine and other injuries of health; and Dr. Eulenberg, 
of Berlin, expresses a similar opinion. Well we may 
say in this matter, " the wages of sin is death," — the 
departure from ethics is a departure from health — but 
the victims in this case are the children, who are not 
the guilty ones. 

Our educational system undermines the resources 
of body and soul. Among its common results in 
schools are headache, nose-bleeding, impaired vision, 
dyspepsia, spinal disease or distortion, general debil- 
ity and nervousness, and finally consumption. 

That the evils of a barbarous system of study still 
exist on a large scale, we are assured by the complaints 
of President Porter, of Yale, that many of the pupils 
of high-schools or academies who are preparing for 
college in the best communities and institutions, " are 
seriously impeded in general culture by the deadening 
and depressing influence " of their studies, so that " their 
germinating activities of thought are arrested and 
sometimes blighted." Macaulay, who detested math- 
ematics, said in his student letters in reference to that 
study: " All my perceptions of elegance and beauty are 
gone, or at least going. By the end of the term my 
brain will be as dry as the remainder biscuit after a 
voyage." 

From the eminent position of his father, the Hon, 
Charles Francis Adams should have had the best ex- 
perience of his time in education. He first attended 
school in Russia. He says: "I went to school where 
I learned nothing, and I remained at home where I 
learned to speak four languages." In England he 
went to school two years, of which he remarked: "I 
most seriously say I learned nothing." " Dr. Nichols 
stood up in his high chair; he came in and looked at us 
for about fifteen minutes, and if there was any boy to 
be whipped, it was done, and then he retired into his 
study." In the United States he made tolerable prog- 
ress in a Latin school in Boston, but says that he 
learned nothing in the schools at Washington. The 
brutal system of the English school was certainly an 
injury to the moral nature. 



180 ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 

What a contrast do we find in these confessions to 
the experience of every school in which a good teacher 
gives oral and illustrated instruction in natural science. 
The Children's Aid Society of New York has found 
such instruction the most effective means of interest- 
ing children, and calling them in from the streets, 
who could not be attracted by any of the ordinary 
agencies of education. 

Dr. Wayland said in one of his addresses: "If after 
six or seven years' study of the languages he had no more 
taste for the classics than for Sanscrit, and sold his 
books to the highest bidder, resolved never again to 
look into them, it was all no matter, he had been 
studying to strengthen his faculties, while by this 
very process his faculties had been enfeebled almost 
to annihilation" — an overstrong expression of the 
stultifying power of false systems — but the time is not 
far off when the system which could sacrifice to dead 
languages time sufficient for a liberal education, will 
be accounted a survival of barbarism. 

Better ideas are everywhere germinating. The 
educational reforms for which my father labored near 
seventy years ago, and for which Fellenbergand Pesta- 
lozzi strove, are beginning to be understood. In the 
speech of Jules Ferry at the Sorbonne a year ago, he 
said that hitherto the school had been a prison, but 
that henceforth it would be transformed into a 
garden, of which even the walls will be rendered in- 
structive. 

The truth in reference to education is self-evident to 
every clear-headed and kind-hearted man. The poet 
Whittier is reported as saying: " I think that the prin- 
cipal mistake of our present civilization is the dwarfing 
of the sensibilities. After early childhood the cultivation 
of the sensibilities begins to give place to intellectual 
training and soon ceases entirely, and the young mind 
is left to train its own sensibilities. It is also taught 
to smother and conceal the impressions and sen- 
sibilities, and eventually hardens into a spirit of indif- 
ference." "Women are more finely adapted to the 
development of such influences than men, because, for 



ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. l8l 

one thing, they are less exposed to hardening from 
without. So the society of the future must be acted 
on more directly by women than that of the past. In 
the bringing out of the sensibilities they must take a 
leading part." 

An educational system depressing to the entire brain 
and oppressive to the intellect is necessarily morbid 
and anti-hygienic in its tendency — developing morbid 
sensitiveness, physical debility, low spirits, and an 
aversion to the practical duties of life. A striking 
example of the morbid effects was that of Miss Ger- 
trude Greenwood, a beautiful young lady, who recently 
left Mount Holyoke Seminary (South Hadley, Mass.), 
at the age of twenty, on account of failing health, but 
pursued her studies in New York, and commenced 
teaching, but soon became prostrated by physical 
debility and disease of the brain, and died from that 
cause. Her admission to Holyoke Seminary was ob- 
jected to on account of her health, and she was com- 
pelled to withdraw before graduating. But why 
should feeble health be an objection to entering an 
educational institution? Why do not such institutions 
improve the body as well as the mind? Why was the 
girl broken down and compelled to leave, if the educa- 
tional system was normal or harmonious in its devel- 
opment? There are probably very few schools where 
the same result would not have occurred just as soon 
or sooner than at Mount Holyoke — but they should 
not occur anywhere. 

Cramming has everywhere taken the place of culture 
and development. In medical schools the area of 
pedantic instruction is continually enlarging, and the 
student's memory is overloaded with an amount of 
irrelevant detail impossible to be remembered, of which the 
practitioner does not retain more than a third — thus 
neglecting the attainment of curative skill, which is 
made subordinate to mere learning — and it is well 
known that the most learned physicians are often the 
most unsuccessful. 

That excellent and beloved teacher, the Rev. Jos. 
Emerson, of Massachusetts, said of his own early 



1 82 ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 

training in childhood: " In all this there was scarcely 
any benefit. It conduced rather, to dulness than 
energy." A remark which the Annals of Education said 
was too generally applicable to schools. Mr. Emer- 
son's remarkable success as a teacher was due to his 
religious fervor, which produced that enthusiastic 
ardor in his duties which was the sole basis of the 
success of the renowned Pestalozzi. Thoroughly de- 
voted to practical utility, inspired by religion and 
poetry, and feeling deeply that the moral influence of 
his teaching might be (for good or evil) eternal, he was 
one of the few teachers to whom moral education was 
spontaneous, and whose own high moral endowments 
lead them intuitively in the right path, and utilize all 
intelligence which enters their circle. 

When will the old colleges and schools be penetrated 
by the simple perception of common sense that in pro- 
portion as an educational system fatigues, depresses, 
and benumbs the faculties, it is doing an injury to 
society. A few warm-hearted teachers of the Pestaloz- 
zian class may have utilized the system by their own 
irrepressible moral energy, but to the majority the 
system was as degrading to teacher as to pupil — more 
and more degrading as the teacher was lacking in 
sympathy, patience, and love. To the morose and 
impatient temper of Carlyle, teaching was a degrading 
vocation, and after teaching the Kirkaldy school two 
years he gave it up, declaring that he " would prefer 
to perish in the ditch if necessary, rather than continue 
living by such a trade." * 

* The repulsive and sickening nature of school duties is due to 
their development of the baser passions of tyranny and cruelty. 
The howlings of the flogged children of the Romans have been 
equalled in many a modern school. Mr. Royce has recorded one 
extraordinary German example as follows: 

"John Jacob Hauberle, more punctual than the rest kept a 
school-flogging journal, in which he informs us of having adminis- 
tered during his schoolmastership of fifty-one years and seven 
months 911,257 strokes of the cane, and 124.000 of the rod, also 
20,989 blows with the ruler; not only 10,235 boxes on the ear, but 
also 7,905 tugs at the same member, and a sum total of 1,115,800 
blows with the knuckles on the head. He imposed besides 22,763 



ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 1 83 

In proportion as education is made interesting and 
pleasant, we insure not only present progress, but an 
unflagging progress through life; investigation being 
associated with pleasure will become a permanent 
habit. 

The union thus established by a genial educational 
system between the intellectual and the ethical pro- 
duces an elevation, clearness and brightness of thought 
which insure progress in truth, and guard the mind 
against narrow dogmatic and fanatical theories. Thus 
will moral education purify and ennoble our literature, 
while it renders intellectual exertion efficient and 
truthful not only in education but throughout life. 

These great and pure effects require great and pure 
causes. The elevation of the pupil requires the prior 
elevation of the teacher, whose soul must be ruled by 
strong unselfish impulses which are found more often 
among women than among men. Ethical inspiration 
must come through an ethical medium. Only the 
good are competent to minister rightly to human prog- 
ress, even in the mere acquisition of knowledge. 

Charles Sumner said of Judge Story: " Only a good 
man can be a teacher, only a benevolent man, only a 
man willing to teach. He sought to mingle his mind 
with that of his pupil. . . . He well knew that the 
knowledge imparted is trivial compared with that 
awakening of the soul under the influence of which 
the pupil himself becomes a teacher, All of knowledge 
we can communicate is finite; a few chapters, a few 
volumes will embrace it. But such an influence is of 
incalculable power; it is the breath of a new life, it is 
another soul." 

That breath of a new life w r hich gives another soul 
must be poured out continually by the voice — the only 
channel through which soul flows into soul with unre- 
stricted freedom. 



fines in the shape of chapters in the Bible and catechism and parts 
of grammar to be learned by heart, ' made 5001 ride the wooden 
horse, 777 kneel on peas, and 631 on a sharp-edged piece of 
wood.'" 



1 84 ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION, 

Looking at education merely as an intellectual pro- 
cess, there is nothing which can advance its power and 
efficiency like the ethical element — not only by the 
enthusiasm, the delight, the energy, the mental clear- 
ness and activity produced, but by its power to render 
fruitful several years that are actually lost from intel- 
lectual education, or worse than lost in the formation 
of idle, careless and wayward habits. More than 
one fourth of our population is under ten years of age, 
and the entire intellectual progress of children of that 
age is very small in amount. But when the teacher 
follows the impulse of love and sympathy in oral 
instruction and in visible illustration, children may 
begin to acquire useful knowledge, kind sentiments, 
and admirable manners, at least as early as five or six 
years of age, or in the Kindergarten as soon as they 
can be trusted without the presence of the nurse, and 
by the age of ten may have acquired a good introduc- 
tion to the knowledge of geography, natural history, 
chemistry, astronomy, physics and hygiene.* The 
rudiments of all sciences may be given in an interest- 
ing manner to children, and the knowledge of reading, 
writing, arithmetic, drawing, geography and the 
physical science which may be thus acquired by ten 
years of age would astonish those who know only the 
old methods of education. This has been demonstrated 
in the Kindergarten schools by the progress of their 
pupils, and of those somewhat older Prof. H. Nichol- 
son, of the Tennessee State Agricultural College, says: 

"Experience in the East Tennessee University, as in all other 
institutions, has demonstrated that the text-book of science should 
be to the science teacher what the text is to a good preacher, merely 
a short statement of the principle or truth to be elaborated, illus- 

*The father of the author was an original thinker, and was 
familiar with the most advanced educational views of his time when 
the Pestalozzian improvements were under discussion. He had 
great anticipations as to the success of his methods with his son, 
and I remember that at the age of ten I had acquired a moderate 
knowledge of reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, geography, 
history, astronomy, geometry, chemistry, and natural philosophy, 
and was beginning the study of mental philosophy, political 
economy, and the principles of the federal government. 



ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 1 85 

trated and applied. For the proper teaching of any physical or 
natural history science, therefore, three things have been found to 
be indispensable : First, A brief statement of the radical principles. 
Second, A clear and simple oral exposition of each principle. 
Third, Practical proof and application of each principle by experi- 
ments. Experience has further demonstrated that by faithful and 
judicious use of these three agencies any of the natural history or 
physical sciences may be profitably and pleasantly taught to a boy 
of ordinary intelligence. It has also proved the good effect of the 
study of the sciences on the boy's character." 

In accordance with these enlightened ideas the 
teachers of elementary classes in colleges at Paris are 
required to conduct their pupils through the galleries 
of the Museum of Natural History, and instruct them 
on the specimens. 

All progressive minds are gradually reaching simi- 
lar conclusions. At a recent discussion in the Educa- 
tion Society of England the conclusion was arrived at 
by the members that the knowledge of nature should 
be acquired not from books, but from things, not 
through verbal memory, but through observation and 
experience, and that the child should begin with ob- 
servation and reasoning from common things, and ad- 
vance along matters of interest into the collateral 
departments of science. Never would any other 
method of teaching have been adopted if ethical in- 
fluences had pervaded schools. The loving teacher 
would have presented only that which would gratify 
instruct and delight his pupils: from the examination 
of plants he would advance into botany, from the ap- 
pearances of the immediate neighborhood into geogra- 
phy, from gathering pebbles into geology, from simple 
experiments into chemistry, from drawing into geom- 
etry and writing, from counting into arithmetic and 
algebra, from star-gazing into astronomy. The moun- 
tain of science is approachable by gradations so easy 
and pleasant that the youngest 'may begin the ascent 
when led by the hand of love. 

The doctrines presented in this chapter may be con- 
cisely embodied in the following propositions: 

1. The moral power is the most important of all in 
education because it is the basis of intellectual power, 



1 86 ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 

of mental soundness, of healthy normal development, 
and of true success in life. 

2. The ethical or spiritual element in man, which is 
the most important subject of education, is so far 
above the sphere of materialism that it cannot be 
adequately comprehended or developed by any one 
whose modes of thought and feeling are controlled by 
materialism. In its highest development, which is re- 
ligion, it is not the mere product of physical condi- 
tions, but becomes a power capable of resisting our 
physical environment. 

3. The intellectual is the feeblest and least impor- 
tant of the psychic elements of our constitution, and 
depends upon the other elements for its development 
and efficiency, being of itself quite helpless. 

4. Each of the psychic elements of humanity has its 
special apparatus in the nervous system and body, 
through which it may be studied and scientifically 
comprehended as to its nature and development — a 
vast work, the outlines of which I have given in 1854 
in a System of Anthropology, and shall reproduce at 
an early date. 

5. In cultivating the ethical nature by the voice of 
the pupil, the voice of the teacher, and the exercise of 
schools, the law of pleasure must be obeyed, that is, 
all exercises should be invigorating and pleasant, and 
not fatiguing or painful. Every educational process 
should be attractive and not repulsive. 

6. Exercises that fatigue the intellect and develop 
no moral energy defeat the purpose of education. 

7. The ethical elements are of two classes, the 
heroic and the genial. Both are essential to educa- 
tion and to literature and philosophy. Colleges and 
literature alike suffer from their absence. 

8. Original productive thought, discovery and prog- 
ress depend essentially upon the elevating, energizing 
influence of the ethical elements, zuithoiit which there is 
no beneficial improvement in anything, and for want of 
which barbarism, ignorance and stolid conservatism 
forbid all progress. 

9. The systems of education prevailing in this cen- 



ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 1 87 

tury have been fatiguing, depressing and injurious to 
both mind and body, injurious alike to teachers and 
pupils. 

10. A high development of the moral faculties in 
the teacher is an essential basis of educational im- 
provement, and this high development naturally tends 
to oral and illustrative teaching. 



The positive manner in which the author has expressed himself in this chap- 
ter in reference to the science of the brain and his own experiments is so 
contrary to the general materialistic and mechanical tendency of scientists 
to-day, who with innumerable and disastrous blunders (disastrous because 
involving human health and life) are trying to convert the science of life into a 
mere science of matter and force, as to require an explanatory note. 

The excitation of the various convolutions of the brain in living persons in 
their most normal condition, and the revelation of cerebral functions which 
have been vainly sought by pathology and vivisection, is either the wildest of 
hallucinations or the most important step that has ever been taken in science 
and philosophy. I have done little as yet to bring it before the world for many 
reasons ; but the following testimonials indicate that I have never failed to 
satisfy any intelligent body of investigators to whom I have presented the sub- 
ject. 

From the Report of the New York Committee — William Cullen Bryant, Dr. 
Samuel For ry, and Hon. J. L. C Sullivan — 1843. 

"They have had sufficient evidence to satisfy them that Dr. Buchanan's 
views have a rational, experimental foundation, and that the subject opens a 
field of investigation second to no other in immediate interest, and in promise 
of important future results to science and to humanity." 

From the Report of the Faculty of Indiana State University. 

"Such were the facts which we jhave witnessed, rot as a mere matter of 
amusement, to prove that such things can be done, and to excite wonder, but 
as illustrations of the most startling discovery that has ever been made in the 
science of man, the consequences of which are too extensive to be foreseen." 

"These experiments were wonderful indeed, but are too well established by 
repetition to admit of a doubt." — Hon. F. P. Stanton and others of Memphis 
Committee. 

M It is but justice to Dr. Buchanan to say that he advances no views and 
urges no doctrine which he does not fully sustain by experiment." — Judges 
Clifton and Mayes, Hon. J. D. Freeman, Dr. Cabaniss, and others of commit- 
tee, Jackson, Miss. 

"While therefore we gratefully accord distinguished honor to the labors of 
Dr. Gall and his coadjutors, we do at the same time regard the contributions 
which have been made to Anthropology, by Dr. Buchanan, as far exceeding 
those of his predecessors." — Prof Warriner and Medical Class of 1849-50. 

"At present, however, you are in advance of the age." — Pref Charles Cald- 
well, founder of the Medical College of Louisville University. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE RELATIONS OF ETHICAL TO PRACTI- 
CAL EDUCATION. 

The laws of culture and growth; what they demand for ethical 
culture. — The beauties of nature an element of culture. — So- 
cial harmony. — Ethical food and ethical exercise. — The code 
of manners. — Self-support a duty, and industry identified with 
virtue. — Effects of employment. — Economy. — Duty of pre- 
serving health. — Its violation at a college. — General disregard 
of hygiene. — Virtue requires labor. — Colleges violate this law. 
— Occupation necessary to health and to virtue. — Example of 
Wellesley College. — Combined training of the muscular and 
the spiritual. — Superiority of school training in the industrial 
arts. — Boston Technological Institute. — European industrial 
schools. — Efficiency of combined study and labor. — Stultifying 
effect of learning trades in shops alone. — Contrast of the in- 
dustrial and the cramming system. — Ignorance of trades a 
cause of crime. — Strong testimony of Prison Reform Confer- 
ence. — Industry diminishes crime. — Labor necessary to cor- 
rect a false moral sentiment. — The false collegiate system il- 
lustrated in England and Germany. — Great changes necessary. 
— The industrial system more pleasing and attractive than any 
other. 

The law of action and growth demands a funda- 
mental change in our educational systems. Every 
faculty that we would cultivate must be brought into 
action. It is as impossible to cultivate the moral 
as the muscular faculties without exercise, and that 
exercise should often be prolonged to the border of 
fatigue. Exercises should be continued regularly, 
and as our powers increase, greater performances 
should be undertaken: but all exercises should be 
of the healthful or pleasant character which is con- 
ducive to growth or development, and should be ac- 
companied by a full supply of the normal food of 
the faculties. 

These are general ana almost self-evident princi- 



ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 1 89 

pies applicable to the culture of every element of 
humanity. The normal exercise of the muscles is 
motion against resistance, overcoming the resist- 
ance, and their normal food is pure oxygenated blood. 
The normal exercise of the digestive organs is the 
solution and vitalization of digestible substances, and 
their normal food is the digestible matter which 
readily yields to their action and gives a healthful 
soothing impression as it is digested. The normal 
action of the intellectual faculties is the acquisition 
of knowledge, and their normal food is the raw mate- 
rial of knowledge which may be digested into rational 
conceptions with facility. As the stomach is op- 
pressed by indigestible matter and exhausts the vital- 
ity of the whole body to sustain it, so is the intellect 
oppressed by confused and unintelligible matter, and 
the whole mental energy exhausted in sustaining the 
oppressed intellect. In like manner the practical ener- 
gies delight in the exercise of beneficial achievements, 
and their normal food is found in the profits, honors 
and powers which they are able to secure in the active 
pursuits of life. 

The ethical faculties (love, duty, firmness, etc.) de- 
light in the exercise of diffusing happiness and wit- 
nessing health, joy, comfort and prosperity, and con- 
sequently in relieving disease, pain, disappointment, 
ignorance, despair and poverty. Their food is human 
happiness and virtue — their exercise the active pro- 
motion of both. Ethical culture then implies a con- 
tinual exertion for the promotion of the happiness of 
others and for their moral elevation and exhilaration, 
with an abundant enjoyment of the results of such ef- 
forts and of the happiness which the higher faculties 
of humanity and the fortunate conditions of society 
have made possible. 

Ethical culture therefore requires that the pupil 
should be surrounded by those who are contented and 
happy, who are entirely governed by the better quali- 
ties of humanity, and that he should be actively en- 
gaged in contributing to their happiness while his own 
nature is being developed by their congenial association. 



190 ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 

The growth of the happy and loving elements of 
human character is in progress wherever happiness 
prevails, as it is retarded or suppressed in an atmos- 
phere of gloom, anger, selfishness, jealousy, conten- 
tion, tyranny and cruelty. The common school has 
been from the earliest times a demoralizing institu- 
tion in w T hich the tyranny and harshness of teachers 
has produced fear, anger, and debasement in pupils. 
The cries and yells of children punished in the 
schools of ancient Rome illustrated and developed the 
reign of evil passions which were glutted in sanguin- 
ary wars and in the bloody spectacles of the Coliseum. 
The tyrannical spirit of the military camp has necessari- 
ly ruled in the school since it has pervaded all society, 
and additional gloom was derived from a horrid theol- 
ogy which recognized God only as delighting in pun- 
ishment, and which everywhere signalized its rule by 
the prison, the gibbet, and the stake, or by mobocratic 
assassination. 

Away from the stifling moral atmosphere of schools 
and camps, the churches of bigotry and superstition, 
and the marts of trade where men struggle for unfair 
advantage, would the moral faculties lead us into the 
calm atmosphere of divine benevolence in the country 
where the blooming flowers, the flourishing grain- 
fields, the lofty health-giving forests and the varying 
brilliant sky inspire the divine love and fill us with a 
calm delight in which we renew that broad love of 
humanity which is stifled in the wretched atmosphere 
of selfish contests. 

The beautiful beneficence of nature is an essential 
element of moral education, and to enjoy its influence 
the school-room should be surrounded by flowers and 
foliage, vines, trees and grass-plots in which the pupils 
may enjoy their sports, and if this be not practicable 
in the city, flowers and vines should be kept grow- 
ing in boxes around the windows, on sunny porticoes 
and on embowered roofs (surrounded by walls or 
railings that render the place perfectly secure), and 
among these refreshing beauties (which would repay 
their cost in shielding the roof and the windows from 



ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. I9I 

the burning sun) the glad voice of many song-birds 
should be heard, pouring forth the spirit of love and 
enthusiasm that animates their beautiful forms, ren- 
dering the school-room the most attractive resort 
known to the young. These beneficial influences should 
be supplemented by excursions to the country by land 
or water, for their moral benefit, utilized in botanical 
and mineralogical explorations and lessons upon birds, 
vegetation and animal life. The delight of these intel 
lectual and social picnic excursions in rural scenes, 
enlivened with songs, sports, games and refreshments, 
will furnish reminiscences that may cheer many hours 
of maturer life. 

The school-room may be made attractive by its 
decorations and pictures, and above all by its interest- 
ing exercises; but as youth demands greater variety 
and is more intolerant of monotony than adult life, 
confinement to the room should never be prolonged 
•until it becomes wearisome; frequent intervals of re- 
laxation should occur, if only for five minutes to take 
a race on the grounds or play some little game, return- 
ing from which a snatch of song with a promenade or 
some calisthenic exercise should reanimate the zeal of 
the student. 

Thus should the ethical nature be kept in continual 
growth, fed by the Divine love through the beauties 
of nature, by the love and inspiration of song, and by 
the manly or womanly virtue expressed in the voice of 
a teacher who loves the pupils and delights in the per- 
formance of duty, the diffusion of knowledge, and the 
winning of the love of the young. 

No sound should fall upon the juvenile ear but of 
voices in harmony with kindly sentiments and genial 
manners. Peremptory orders to overcome stubborn 
wills, harsh rebukes, threats and scoldings should never 
be heard. Nothing that excites alarm or humiliates 
self-respect should be tolerated; kindness and courtesy 
should make all the intercourse of the school-room 
pleasant; and punishment, if necessary, should be ad- 
ministered in another apartment. But under a proper 
system of moral government (see Ethical Culture) 



192 ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 

punishment would never be needed except by a class 
of depraved youth whom it might be necessary to iso- 
late from the rest until reformed. But even the worst 
class of youth would not need any punishment after 
the influence of one or two years of moral education 
have been realized. As men of depraved character are 
sometimes agreeable in their families, where they have 
a sphere of affection, so would children who come from 
a sphere of turbulence and rudeness grow into the 
habit of suppressing the evil passions in the presence 
of the unvarying harmony and amid the interesting 
exercises of the school-room. 

Having thus secured for the ethical faculties their 
proper food in social harmony, and scenes of beauty 
and happiness, we need the best exercise by which 
this moral nourishment shall be appropriated and 
utilized in growth. Analogy makes this clear. No 
amount of feeding without exercise will properly 
develop the body. It may grow, but the growth will 
be soft and the muscle feebly corpulent instead of ath- 
letic; such a body disappoints us in its achievements. 
Just so in the development of the soul. It may be 
morally emaciated and dwarfed by the lack of moral 
food and exercise. Surrounded by brutality and tyr- 
anny, hearing no voice of love and seeing no beauties 
of nature, many a poor maltreated child in the city 
becomes by moral starvation a mere animal. Its 
higher faculties have never developed for want of food. 
On the other hand, the child of loving parents, shielded 
from everything unpleasant, fed with kindness, har- 
mony, beauty and love, but never disciplined by exer- 
tion in the performance of duty, becomes in every 
respect feeble and unfit for the duties of life, and, 
though full of refined sentiment, unable to resist the 
depressive and debasing influences of contact with sel- 
fish society. 

If therefore our moral education dealt only in refin- 
ing humanizing influences, it would not accomplish its 
chief purposes in fitting the pupil for the duties' of life. 
A surfeit of food, without exercise to appropriate the 
nourishment and develop^ a taste for more, impairs 



ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. I93 

digestion and health. So does the surfeit of kindness 
bestowed on a pampered child impair its power of 
appreciating w r hat it receives, and become the food of 
the selfishness and arrogance seen in spoilt children. 
Food must be accompanied by exercise, and a more 
robust moral constitution is developed by exercise 
with scanty food than by food with scanty exercise. 
The overtaxed wife who rears her family by incessant 
toil without sustaining care from her husband, attains 
a better moral development than the petted wife who 
knows little of the labors and duties of life. 

What then are the exercises during education which 
are fitted to give a robust moral development? 

In the first place, every moral faculty should be re- 
quired to manifest itself in the control of conduct and 
manners at all times, and the cultured moral sense of 
the teacher should vigilantly observe every departure 
from the dictates of the highest sentiments. A high- 
toned code of manners should be adopted, and its ob- 
servance made easy by habit and example, while its 
propriety and necessity should be made familiar to the 
mind by lucid explanations and illustrative anecdotes. 
Once every day a brief discourse should be given by 
the teacher, not over fifteen minutes in length, illus- 
trating in turn each of the virtues and the propriety of 
each rule of manners, and when the general principles 
were sufficiently understood, interesting narratives 
would not only impress them on the mind, but would 
themselves attract by the charm which attaches to ro- 
mances, which are by far the most popular literature 
with the young. Moral lessons conveyed in the narra- 
tive form make a deeper impression than in any other 
mode. Under the influence of such instruction it will 
be easy to lead the pupil into benevolent acts, such as 
volunteering to help the sick or unfortunate. The pu- 
pils of M. Wichern willingly shared their scanty accom- 
modations and limited food with the sufferers by fire at 
Hamburg. Pestalozzi invited his pupils at Stanz to 
help the unfortunate children left destitute by the 
destruction of Altdorf, telling them they would have 



194 ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 

to work harder and eat less, and they willingly under- 
took to make these sacrifices. 

But something more than all this is requisite. True, 
the constant observance of all the forms and expres- 
sions of kindness, deference, candor, courtesy, liber- 
ality, politeness, fairness, good temper, docility, self- 
control and dignity must establish these virtues in 
supremacy and form a character fitted for social har- 
mony. But social harmony is not a moral career. Life 
is a labor, a struggle, and to many a battle — a battle 
either for selfish or for noble purposes. Our moral 
principles must be identified with our life struggle — 
with all the firmness, heroism, energy and industry of 
which we are capable. 

Therefore, they must begin their exercise not only 
in the assumption of appropriate manners or expres- 
sion, but in appropriate acts. We should as pupils 
(either in education or in after-life) ascertain carefully 
what duties are incumbent upon us, and commence 
their practice without delay or omission. 

The first moral duty incumbent on every human be- 
ing is that of self-support. He must support himself 
or be supported by others. Enlightened conscience 
demands that he shall support himself, and, if possible, 
give assistance to others who need it. This duty can- 
not be lightly postponed to manhood, for in that case 
we are establishing a habit of depending on others. 
Children should assist in the cares and labors of their 
parents as far as possible, and during their education 
they should keep their business destination in view 
and diligently prepare for the labors of life. This 
preparation is a moral duty. If we feel the responsi- 
bilities that are to rest upon us, we should make the 
preparation therefor a leading object. In other words 
moral education involves industrial education as an indis- 
pensable element, and there is no substantial and com- 
plete moral education which excludes the industrial 
element and surrenders the pupil to the luxuries of 
mental and moral culture, without realizing the great 
permanent duties of life and commencing their per- 
formance. 



ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 1 95 

This does not imply that all shall engage in vigorous 
manual labor as the only industrial occupation, but 
that all should be engaged in preparing for a life of 
usefulness and self-support — that all should feel the 
urgency of duty and realize the value of time as some- 
thing that cannot be innocently trifled with or squan- 
dered. They should realize that every hour has its 
duties — that idleness is a form of profligacy of which 
they should be ashamed, and that every day should be 
conducted with a view to results in future years — to 
the early attainment of independence and the perform- 
ance of beneficent deeds. 

This conscientious fidelity and forecast are the basis 
of that higher fidelity and wisdom which belong to 
religion, which serves the highest ideal of duty now 
and prepares for the endless ages of the higher life. 
No moral life is sound which is not occupied in labor 
for the future, or which occupies in trivial and pedantic 
studies time which should be consecrated to useful 
achievements. Nor is it a proper introduction to the 
duties of life to allow the eighteen or twenty years of 
minority to be spent chiefly in idleness, acquiring 
indolence and thriftlessness at least, and often profli- 
gacy and turbulence. A little calculation will show 
that the average school-boy of the city spends three- 
fourths of his time in irresponsible idleness, learning 
practically that the indulgence of all his appetites, 
passions and impulses, without a thought of the future, 
is his natural right, and fixing in his constitution the 
habit of a heedless life without responsibility. 

When the vicious children of New York demoralized 
in idleness get into the boys' prison of the Tombs, the 
manager, Mrs. Hill, finds that nothing will do them 
much good but employment. " How do I keep them out 
of mischief ?" said Mrs. Hill. " Oh! I have solved that 
problem. I tried books and games and pictures, but 
found them all to fail. I came to the conclusion the 
boys should be kept constantly employed 'at some intricate 
as well as interesting labor. I decided to put them at 
bead-work. I taught the boys to make rings, crosses, 
necklaces, and such thing?. In my experience, boys 



I96 ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 

brought in here have no home influences, and as a rule 
they are devoid of moral sense. A boy may come in 
here with a sore toe; the others will amuse themselves 
by stepping on it. They seem heartless. Very, very 
few have any real good in them to start with, so that 
I find it most difficult to start them in the way of 
doing right. Once get them employed, and show them 
that I take an interest in their work by praising it and 
showing it to others, they bristle up and gradually 
change to something humanized. " 

No education is complete and sound which does not 
impress on the mind the value of labor, and of the 
wealth which it creates* — which does not give a 
realizing sense of the cost of all that we enjoy and the 
necessity of handling conscientiously every dollar that 
comes into our possession. To earn a dollar by a day's 
labor is the only way to learn its value. He who 
knows money only as a gift from parents, never as the 
product of his own toil, handles it with a freedom 
which is very apt to be prodigal if not profligate, and 
in this profligate management of wealth may squander 
thousands on selfish pleasures, but seldom gives from 
real benevolence. Unless he is practiced in youth in 
diligence and self-control, he has a very poor concep- 
tion of substantial virtue. 

Nor is there any sound moral education unless the 
conception of our life duties is the dominant and all- 
pervading thought, both in teacher and pupil, each 
working to prepare for a special career. 

The most imperious and pervading demand of the 
moral faculty is to preserve our own health and the 
health of all around us with vigilant care. To neglect 
this would exhibit deplorable ignorance or deplorable 
moral apathy. Tiiis very ignorance and moral apathy 
have pervaded our colleges time out of mind, and it is 

* Prince Albert seems to have had some such ideas, for the let- 
ters of Sir Charles Lyell, lately published, speak of the household 
of Queen Victoria, and describe the young children working dili- 
gently with spades and hoes under their father's direction, and 
receiving the pay of common day-laborers, to teach them something 
of the life of that class of the population. 



ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 1 97 

not long since one of our most flourishing and famous 
colleges (Princeton College) was broken up — the class 
dispersed — by an outbreak of malignant fever caused 
by this negligence. Dr. Doughty, who attended Mr. 
Rainsford, one of the victims, said: "It seems hardly 
credible, as I have been informed was the case, that 
through defective drainage and plumbing the poison- 
ous exhalations of a great cesspool were allowed to 
filter into buildings of the college that were occupied 
during the great part of the day and the whole of the 
night by young men whose health should have been 
the first consideration of the faculty," I do not refer 
to this as a reproach to Princeton College, which is 
about on a par in this respect with other institutions, 
and which has since entirely remedied these sanitary 
defects, but as an illustration of the prevailing heart- 
lessness or moral apathy in collegiate institutions. 
With barbarian energy they dazzle the public eye with 
the ostentation of brick and marble, while neglecting 
the health of soul and body in those under their care. 
This apathy has been universal, and even the Prince 
of Wales a few years since narrowly escaped death 
from the same causes so fatal to Princeton students — 
a violation of hygienic principles in house construction 
which would not occur if builders and workmen were 
properly instructed in their business, and knew how to 
control the movements of liquids and gases for which 
they construct pipes and reservoirs. It is a very small 
amount of knowledge indeed (w r hich could be imparted 
in three or four hours of clear practical instruction) 
but for want of that little knowledge alike in mechanics, 
scientists and literati, half the buildings of the city of 
New York are in an unwholesome condition, and not 
only our national Capitol but the hall of the meetings 
of the French Institute has been in a shamefully un- 
wholesome condition, which provoked the condemna- 
tion of M. Leverrier. This matter is so important to 
the health which sustains our moral as well as physical 
energies, that I deem it necessary to give a special 
chapter to ventilation. Fortunately for New York, 
the Technical Schools of the Metropolitan Museum of 



I98 ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 

Art at Sixty-seventh street and First avenue, under Mr. 
John Buckingham, have opened a class for instruction 
in sanitar}^ engineering (May, 1881), which receives two 
lectures weekly for two months, and will be qualified 
to conduct the work of the plumber beneficially to the 
public health. 

It is moral apathy which neglects hygiene and 
ignores the sentiment of social morals expressed in 
the daily question, " How are you ?" or " Are you well 
to-day?" and it is the isolation of the college from 
human life which is a consequence of this moral 
apathy. A society in which men bury themselves in 
the literature of older and more barbarous times, ignor- 
ing, or at least neglecting, the fresh thought and 
original discovery of to-day and the daily news of 
human progress, is a cold, unwholesome place for the 
human soul, and collegiate morals become sentimental, 
not practical and real. 

It is a puerile feebleness of character which merely 
contemplates or admires the virtues and cultivates 
pleasing manners without seeking to know what is 
incumbent on ourselves and resolving to do what 
duty demands. The very word virtue implies that 
strong sentiment of duty which is prompt and eager 
to act. An indolent sentimentalism without real virtue 
may be very pleasing in society and very deceptive, 
because indolent, irresolute, and practically almost 
worthless for any important purpose. 

Shall we in education cultivate this indolent senti- 
mentalism or robust virtue ? Shall we cultivate senti- 
ment without action, and thus divorce them, and es- 
tablish for an educational period of &sie or ten years, 
which forms permanent habits, an emasculated moral- 
ism, which utters fine sentiments and seems to feel 
them, but does no good deeds that require effort? 
We must determine the choice between lazy semi- 
profligate sentimentalism and manly virtue, by leav- 
ing the pupil in pampered ease, or by requiring him 
to assume his share of the burden and practical duties 
of life, and grow up in the strength derived from 
bearing burdens and responsibilities. 



ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 1 99 

The country lad who assists his parents on the 
farm enjoys this moral discipline, of which city youth 
are generally deprived, and consequently attains the 
robustness of mind as well as body which wins success. 
Such was the experience of Horace Mann in youth, 
who said in a letter to a friend: " Train your children 
to work, though not too hard. I have derived one 
compensation from the rigor of my early lot — industry 
or diligence became my second nature. Owing to 
these ingrained habits, work has been to me what 
water is to a fish. I have wondered a thousand times 
to hear people say, 1 1 don't like this business/ or ' I 
wish I could exchange for that/ for with me, when- 
ever I have anything to do, I do not remember ever 
to have demurred. " 

"Manual labor/' says Channing, " fosters a sounder 
judgment, a keener observation, a more creative im- 
agination, and a purer taste." 

The old collegiate system was eminently calculated 
to foster profligacy, and, indeed, was quite successful 
in lowering the moral tone. Young men were ex- 
empted from all laborious duties, and simply expected 
to read text-books and listen to teachers. While the 
moral sense was thus deprived of manly exercise, they 
underwent the demoralizing influences of the unregu- 
lated association of youth, generally turbulent, and 
untrained in good breeding and good morals, and the 
depressing influence of a collegiate authority, cold, 
indifferent, unsympathetic, and somewhat tyrannical. 
Hence colleges have often been hot-beds of vice and 
coarse animalism, which is especially true of medical 
colleges, in which the public have a right to demand 
the highest degree of ethical excellence. 

The moral degradation of the collegiate atmosphere 
was not compensated in the universities by any sub- 
stantial intellectual acquisition, either of useful knowl- 
edge or of original thought. Until the middle of the 
present century all was hollow and unsubstantial. As 
Locke said, " We learn not to live, but to dispute, and 
our education fits us rather for the university than for 
the world. But it is no wonder if those who make 



200 ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 

the fashion suit it to what they have, and not to what 
their pupils want. ' ' 

This art of disputation was a part of the demoral- 
izing influences of college education. The languages, 
grammar and rhetoric which constituted the body of 
education two hundred years ago were entirely void 
of moral or rational influence, and were associated, 
especially in Jesuit schools, with cunning disputation 
and eager, envious rivalry or emulation destructive of 
generous sentiments and love of truth. 

I refer to these things, though somewhat obsolete, 
because colleges retain so permanently the spirit even 
of an obsolete system, and for the first half of this 
century they have been giving an education with so 
little utility or true mental culture as to have pro- 
voked the rough exclamation ascribed to Horace 
Greeley, " Of all horned cattle, a college graduate is 
of the least value in newspaper work." What just 
view of human life can be entertained by one who, 
neglecting useful knowledge, has spent the major 
part of his time in acquiring familiarity with the dead 
languages, which are but a minor portion even of in- 
tellectual education? " I venture to think," says Prof. 
Huxley, " that a knowledge of Greek is no more an in- 
dispensable element of a liberal education than is a 
knowledge of Sanscrit, or of the differential calculus, 
or of vertebrate morphology."* 

*The disastrous effects of neglecting useful knowledge in the 
pursuit of the dead languages, have been terribly realized by many 
college graduates. The New York Times of May 7, 1S82, said, 
speaking of the unemployed in New York: " No small number of 
the searchers for places are native Americans, forced to take what- 
ever offers, and nothing offers. Many of them are educated men, 
who can conjugate a Greek verb without difficulty, but Greek verbs, 
however ornamental, are a poor stock in trade. A thorough clas- 
sical education, however desirable it may be, is of little use in the 
employment market, unless backed by some useful practical knowl- 
edge. College graduates are standing on every corner, looking 
for work. If any person should desire to ride up Broadway in a 
coach drawn by a score of accomplished collegians, he would have 
no trouble in employing them, even if he offered them no more 
than their board." 



ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 201 

The establishment of the Alsatian College at Paris, 
now one of the most valuable educational institutions 
of that city, was due to the tenacious adherence of the 
universities to their lingual studies, and the determi- 
nation to establish physical science in the space here- 
tofore given to the classics. 

Useful occupation is essential to mental health, and it is 
the lack of useful occupation which fills our jails with 
criminals, and does much to fill our lunatic asylums. 
Of New York criminals, recently statistics show that 
two thirds knew no useful trade, and among lunatics 
the introduction of useful employments has been the 
greatest of benevolent innovations. The superintend- 
ent of a New York asylum said that the idleness of 
the patients was deplorable, and that he had known a 
violent insane patient benefited by putting him to 
break stones on the road. Many a profligate young 
collegian might have been saved and reformed by in- 
dustrial training. The Romans understood this princi- 
ple in the management of soldiers, regarding their idle- 
ness as dangerous. Tacitus says that the amphithea- 
tres of Bologna and Cremona were erected by Vitel- 
lius less as a matter of benevolence to those cities, 
than for the purpose of keeping his turbulent legions 
employed. 

The manly as well as the amiable virtues should be 
cultivated from the very beginning of education. The 
youngest children should be taught to make themselves 
useful, and to regard an indolent and useless person 
as a degraded being, a loafer, a pauper, a shirk, a 
beggar. They should be taught to perform errands 
and services, to wait upon their fellows at table,* to 
clean their school-room and put everything in order, 
to attend to their bedrooms without the assistance of 
a chambermaid, to make fires, to manage the ventila- 
tion, to handle the fuel, to bring water and hand it 
round, and generally to seek every opportunity of render- 
ing a service. 

* If one half sit down at table, while the other half wait upon 
them, after which they exchange their positions, the moral effect 
would be far better than that of depending on servants. 



202 ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 

In the magnificent Wellesley College for women, at 
Wellesley (fifteen miles from Boston), the pupils do all 
the lighter work of the household — " they set the 
tables, wait upon them, clear them away when the 
meals are done, sweep and dust both public halls and 
private rooms, are, in a word, the housekeepers. It is 
an incidental advantage of this system that it largely 
diminishes the expenses of service, and reduces the 
price of board and tuition. . . . After four years of 
college life, graduates do not go back to look down 
upon the household work of mother and sister as 
something menial and servile. It has been through- 
out a part of their higher education. " (L. Abbott.) 

The youngest should be trained by these methods 
in habits of useful industry, but those over ten years 
of age should be trained not only to industry, but to 
skill and energy in manly vocations. There is a 
vast variety of useful occupations in which boys and 
girls might be profitably engaged, without suffering 
from the dull tediousness of monotonous labor. The 
cultivation of the garden, orchard, and vineyard, the 
raising of poultry, the care of animals and the harvest- 
ing of crops * of all kinds furnish an interesting va- 
riety of out-door employments, which would be made 
doubly interesting by the stimulus of companionship 
and competition, enlivened at times by songs. Gar- 
dening is taught in the schools of Japan, and nowhere 
in the world are the flower-gardens so perfect, or the 
manners of the people so courteous and friendly. 

For in-door labors there is a still greater variety, 
since there are few handicrafts in which they might 
not be trained. The vocations of tailor, shoemaker,f 



* Vermont boys under seventeen years of age, in competing for 
prizes offered by Trustees of the University and State Agricultural 
College, raised extraordinary crops. Their highest yield was 192 
bushels of shelled corn to the acre (which old farmers can hardly 
believe), and 422 bushels potatoes — the latter three times an or- 
dinary crop, and the former more than four times. 

fin the Industrial Home school, near Georgetown, D. C, boys 
are taught shoemaking and other useful trades, and girls receive 
instruction in household duties. 



ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 203 

basket-maker, carpenter, cabinet-maker, metal-worker, 
hatter, cook, pharmacist, draughtsman, printer, etc., 
etc., furnish varied and interesting occupation, in the 
pursuit of which under proper instruction more use- 
ful knowledge would be gained than in their literary- 
studies, while every hour of such occupation consti- 
tutes a practical moral lesson, teaching them to pre- 
pare for useful lives, to sympathize with the laboring 
classes, and to pride themselves on useful abilities, in- 
stead of renouncing human brotherhood in their scorn 
of the poor workman, and taking their chief pride in 
ornamental but useless attainments. Moreover, all 
these labors would be portions of a true hygienic sys- 
tem for raising the physical constitution to its maxi- 
mum power and health. The training given to a mere 
athlete for physical contests is not the best. It aims 
merely at muscular development, but a true educa- 
tional training combines the muscular and the spirit- 
ual, the moral energies as well as the physical, and 
therefore produces a higher grade of health. Crib, 
the champion pugilist of England, reduced his corpu- 
lence in eleven weeks* training from 16 stone to 13 
stone, 5 pounds, and vanquished his antagonist. In 
a true training-school, the increase in moral energy 
would be as great as in muscular power, and with that 
increased moral power the man would have far greater 
endurance. "A somewhat varied experience of men," 
said Prof. Huxley, "has led me, the longer I live, to 
set less value upon mere cleverness, to attach more 
and more importance to industry and to physical endur- 
ance. Indeed, I am much disposed to think that en- 
durance is the most valuable quality of all." 

Industrial training obtained at school is practically 
worth more to the majority of pupils than all their in- 
tellectual education. It is an assurance of independ- 
ence and success. It places the pupil in a short time, 
without any serious hindrance of his literary culture, 
farther advanced in his useful capacities than the 
rudely trained subjects of the old seven years' appren- 
ticeship, who seldom gained more than a Chinese 
knowledge of their trades, a mere capacity for imita- 



204 ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 

tion. But even this stolid instruction has nearly be- 
come obsolete, for apprenticeship has gone out of 
fashion, and we are overrun with half-trained mechan- 
ics. President Runkle, of the Boston Institute of 
Technology, said that he had found by inquiry that 
" not more than one in ten of the journeymen workers 
at the several trades taught in the Institute would do 
as good work after three }^ears' apprenticeship and 
subsequent practice at their respective trades as three 
fourths of the pupils could after one course of lessons 
aggregating 120 hours." * 

Such pupils are not mere working-machines, but 
understand their business and easily make improve- 
ments or changes. They are competent to take a high 
rank in their business, and they have been saved the 
demoralizing influences of an apprentice life in the 
midst of coarse and turbulent deportment. They 
have also been protected from the jealous hostility of 
ignorant journeymen who would bar the doors 
against their entrance to learn a trade. They are 
fully prepared for life, and not, like the victims of un- 

* The facility with which trades may be acquired was shown at 
Lane Seminary, near Cincinnati, where the students by three 
weeks' practice in printing made sufficient proficiency to earn $2.50 
a week by three hours' daily labor. In the manual-labor school of 
Washington University at St. Louis, with a school-day of six hours, 
one hour is given to drawing and two hours to shop-work, in which 
they are practised in wood-working and in blacksmith and forge 
work. A manufacturing firm in Springfield, Mass., has adopted a 
system of six years' apprenticeship in which drawing-instruction is 
combined with shop-work. The apprentices are paid, according to 
their ages, five, six, or seven cents per hour during the first year, 
the pay being increased each year by one cent more per hour. 
Does not this show that if industrial schools were sufficiently en- 
dowed to give their pupils dormitories free of rent, their labor 
might be sufficient for the actual expenses of subsistence, if their 
time were equally divided between study and work ? This opens a 
glorious educational future for our country. If we refer to the 
statement of President Eliot that it requires $2000 to take a young 
man through a college course at Harvard, it is obvious that a lib- 
eral education on the old collegiate plan is accessible only to the 
wealthy. On the moral and industrial plan it may be made acces- 
sible to all. But even two years of rational education would be 
preferable to a Harvard course. 



& 



ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 205 

practical education, prepared for a tedious and uncer- 
tain struggle. Even charity students have been 
trained in this preposterous manner. Mr.W. H. Smith, 
M.P. ? spoke of a large institution in London from 
which children fourteen years of age would sometimes 
go out to obtain a situation and come back with tears 
in their eyes because they found themselves unquali- 
fied for common employments. 

Labor is dignified by association with intellectual 
culture, and may be made highly interesting and at- 
tractive; the Agricultural College at Guelph in Can- 
ada, where agriculture is learned through work, has 
been so popular as to have to reject 200 applications 
for admission recently. Democratic America has not 
kept pace with aristocratic Europe* in this democratic 
movement. The communal schools of Paris have es- 
tablished fifty workshops, and will soon establish more, 
in which each child may acquire handicraft arts. 
Paris has had for some time technical schools in which 
the pupil gives in the first year four hours to labor 
and in the last year eight hours to labor and two to 
study. Italy has 160 technical schools of art and 
trades, employing 570 teachers. Germany has nearly 
two hundred agricultural schools. 

Believing that by this method pupils might be pre- 
pared to prosecute skilfully various vocations (with- 
out the dull influence of apprenticeship), I neverthe- 
less regard these practical lessons as of the highest 
importance for the development of moral character 
and confirmation of habits of active devotion to duty. 
They are worth the time they would occupy simply as 
moral training, a training which puts them at once in 
possession of the manly virtues. Nor would such les- 
sons result in literary loss, for the conquest of prof- 
ligate indolence, the development of resolute indus- 
try and sense of obligation would greatly increase 



* English and American aristocracy looks with scorn upon useful 
trades, but in Prussia the royal princes are taught trades when 
young, and the Emperor's private cabinet has specimens of car- 
pentry, carving, bookbinding, etc., from his sons and grandsons. 



206 ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 

the efficiency of students; and, the experience of the 
State Reform School at Lancaster, Ohio, is entirely 
decisive, since the inmates of that institution, divid- 
ing their time equally between work and study, were 
at least as proficient as the youth of the common 
schools, in which no time was given to labor. In the 
British Association, Dr. Norris, who had investigated 
this subject, maintained that children who divided 
their time equally between study and work made 
better progress in each than those who gave all their 
time to study or all their time to work. It must be 
so, for the human constitution demands variety or 
change in everything, and prolonged exertion with- 
out change is destructive. If the arm is kept flexed 
by the flexor or extended by the extensor muscles, 
it is speedily exhausted, but if the muscles are used 
alternately, the labor may be continued several 
hours. We may be busily occupied sixteen hours 
daily with sufficient variety in the occupation. It 
has been fully demonstrated in schools for the fee- 
ble-minded that school-instruction does not produce 
as satisfactory effects in developing their mental 
powers as training in manual labor. 

While work thus elevates the efficiency of study, it 
is equally true that study increases the efficiency of 
work. The value of the skilled laborer generally is 
about twice as great as that of the unskilled; and 
while the latter has before him a hopeless, dreary 
prospect of toil, which extinguishes ambition — since a 
bare subsistence for himself and family, alternating 
with periods of depression and want, is all that he 
can expect — the former, with twice the wages, may 
look forward to comfort and independence. Such is 
the. result even where his knowledge of arts is ob- 
tained by apprenticeship or by imitation and self- 
teaching. The country is full of ignorant, self-taught 
and inferior artisans, who are generally but imperfect 
masters of only one occupation, and who are in con- 
tinual danger of want from a decline of markets or 
an overplus of labor, while enlightened artisans, com- 
petent to engage in different occupations, would be 



ETHICAL A AW PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 20J 

ready for any business in demand, and command the 
highest wages until they are ready to become master 
manufacturers with their own capital. 

The stultifying effect of divorcing education and 
labor has been the greatest of obstructions to social 
progress. It has made artisans as stubbornly and 
stupidly monotonous in their methods and as hostile 
to improvements as governments, churches, and col- 
leges. Hence mechanics have seldom heretofore im- 
proved their own processes. Improvements have been 
made by those from the outside who have not been 
subjected to the stultifying effects of imitative and 
monotonous toil. The cotton-gin was invented by 
the school-master Eli AVhitney, the spinning jenny by 
the barber Richard Arkwright, and the power-loom 
by a clergyman, the Rev. Edward Cartwright. Steam- 
boat-navigation was developed by Fitch, a silversmith, 
and Fulton, a portrait-painter, while an English 
farmer, named Smith, introduced the screw-propeller. 
Stereotyping was invented, not by a printer, but by a 
goldsmith, named Ged. The puddling of iron was 
due to a jeweller, named Cort, and the change of the 
flint to the percussion lock was due to a clergyman. 

The intellectual success of laboring students has 
been due to the energy acquired by industrial occupa- 
tion. Every parent or teacher knows that the brain 
is terribly debilitated by prolonged effort in study, 
which tends to debility, disease, and insanity, and that 
the renewed energy of the brain derived from animat- 
ed exercise and amusement is so essential to health 
and to intellectual progress, that without their aid all 
schools would be broken up by the prostration of 
their pupils under the prevalent cramming system. 
" Far too much is attempted to be crammed into the 
unfortunate pupils," says Commissioner Wm. Wood, 
of the New York Board of Education.* 



* Macmillan's Magazine says: " The psychological mischief done 
by excessive cramming both in some schools and at home is 
sufficiently serious to show that the reckless course pursued in 
many instances ought to be loudly protested against. As we write 
four cases come to our knowledge of girls seriously injured by 



208 ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 

It is not generally understood that the tonic power 
of useful occupation is more effective than that of 
amusement, and the most effective amusement or ex- 
ercise is that in which the attention and energies are 
concentrated vigorously as in business. Much of the 

this folly and unintentional wickedness. In one, the brain is ut- 
terly unable to bear the burden put upon it, and the pupil is 
removed from school in a highly excitable state; in another, epi- 
leptic fits have followed the host of subjects pressed upon the 
scholar; in the third, the symptoms of brain fog have become so 
obvious that the amount of schooling has been greatly reduced; 
and in a fourth, fits have been induced and complete prostration 
of brain has followed. These cases are merely illustrations of a 
class, coming to hand in one day, familiar to most physicians. 
The enormous number of subjects which are forced into the cur- 
riculum of some schools and are required by some professional 
examinations, confuse and distract the mind, and by lowering its 
healthy tone often unfit it for the world. While insanity may not 
directly result from this stuffing, and very likely will not, exciting 
causes of mental disorder occurring in later life may upset a 
brain which, had it been subjected to more moderate pressure, 
would have escaped unscathed, Training in its highest sense is 
forgotten in the multiplicity of subjects, originality is stunted and 
individual thirst of knowledge overlaid by "a crowd of novel theo- 
ries based upon yet unproved statements. Mr. Brudenell Carter, 
in his " Influence of Education and Training in Preventing Diseases 
of the Nervous System," speaks of a large public school in London 
in which boys of 10 to 12 years of age carry home tasks which 
would occupy them till near midnight, and of which the rules 
and laws of study are so arranged as to preclude the possibility 
of sufficient recreation. The teacher in a High School says that 
the host of subjects on which parents insist instruction being 
given to their children is simply preposterous, and disastrous 
alike to health and to real steady progress in necessary branches 
of knowledge. The other day we met an examiner in the street 
with a roll of papers consisting of answers to questions. He 
deplored the fashion of the day; the number of subjects cram- 
med within a few years of growing life; the character of the 
questions which were frequently asked; and the requiring a stu- 
dent to master, at the peril of being rejected, scientific theories, 
and crude speculations, which they would have to unlearn in a 
year or two. He sincerely pitied the unfortunate students. Dur- 
ing the last year or two the public have been startled by the 
suicides which have occurred on the part of young men prepar- 
ing for examination at the University of London, and the press has 
spoken out strongly on the subject. Notwithstanding this, the 
authorities appear to be disposed to increase instead of diminish 
the stringency of some of the examinations." 



ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 209 

amusement of boys and girls is beneficial merely as a 
change which brings into play a new set of faculties 
and permits the overtaxed powers to rest. From 
such amusements they return with dissipated minds, 
and have a difficulty in resuming study. But from 
vigorous industrial occupation they return with the 
fixed attention, self-control and moral energy which 
fit them for study. From making a wagon to study- 
ing a geometrical problem the transition is not great. 
But even if industrial occupation interfered serious- 
ly with literary progress, as it may when the student 
sustains himself by his own labor, it would be amply 
repaid by the good habits and moral energies which 
it develops. Useful industry strengthens both the 
intellectual and the moral powers, and is therefore es- 
sential to a complete educational development. Hence 
it is indispensable when we would build up the de- 
based moral nature and the undisciplined intellect of 
criminals, or when w r e would protect the young 
against the tendency to crime. President S. S. Laws, 
of the Missouri State University, said in an official 
report: 

" The five evils which like vampires are drinking up the life-blood 
of this commonwealth are extravagance, indolence, ignorance, 
drunkenness, and crime. An agricultural school so maintained that 
its power will be effective in fostering intelligent industry is a most 
proper and economical State remedy for these evils." 

This remedy operates by preventing indolence and 
the consequent intemperance, poverty and crime, for 
very few convicts have been taught to be good work- 
men. Prof. Lieber found among 358 convicts in one 
prison only one in seven who had acquired a trade. 
The acquisition of trades, however, is not an absolute 
safeguard, because they have commonly been acquired 
amid the rude and demoralizing associations common 
in workshops. The acquisition of the same trades in 
schools would be a very different affair. Whatever 
industrial instruction has been established it has rap- 
idly diminished crime, and as this cannot be said for 
any other system of schools, it is evident that the indus- 



210 ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 

trial element is an indispensable portion of moral educa- 
tion. 

The Prison Reform Conference, held at Newport, 
R.I., in August, 1877, adopted unanimously a syllabus 
or declaration to be presented to the Legislatures of 
States, in which the importance of industrial training 
as a moral education for the repression of crime was 
forcibly argued. 

" To destroy the seeds of crime, to dry up its sources, to kill it 
in the egg, is better than repression, better even than reformation 
of the criminal. But, after all the best organized and best admin- 
istered system of public instruction can accomplish, there will re- 
main a considerable residuum of children (it cannot be to-day in 
the United States less than half a million, and probably much 
more) whom these systems will not reach. It is from this class 
that the ranks of crime are continually recruited, and will be so 
long as it is permitted to exist. They are born to crime and 
brought up for it. . . . The Conference desires to emphasize the 
high importance it attaches to the industrial or professional training 
of the classes of children referred to. Among the most fruitful 
of crime-causes is beyond all question the lack of just such technical 
t?aining — in other words, the want of a trade." 

" Apprentice-schools should therefore be established in sufficient 
numbers to insure the professional education of all such children." * 

Equally emphatic was the testimony of the Confer- 
ence as to the value of industrial training in reforming 
those already criminal. 

"Whether criminals are susceptible to reformatory influences 
and may be lifted out of the abyss into which they have fallen is 
no longer an open question. Experience has demonstrated the 
fact, and all authority worthy of the name utters its voice to the 
same effect." 

" Labor is a prime agency in every reformatory system of prison 

* Apprenticeship has been generally abandoned in the United 
States, but a Springfield, Mass., manufacturer has renewed ap- 
prenticeship on a plausible plan. The boys are bound for six 
years, and at first receive five cents an hour, which is increased 
until they finally get twelve cents. They also are allowed two 
cents*an hour, payable on their discharge, giving them about $400 
with which to begin business. He allows 58 hours a week to work 
and nine to study. This is an improved system, but not to be 
compared for a moment with regular technical instruction and 
work in a school. 



ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 211 

discipline. It was a favorite maxim with Howard: ' Make men 
diligent and they will be honest/ Unless prisoners acquire during 
their captivity both the will and the power to earn honest bread, 
which can be done only by imparting to them the love and the 
habit of industry, the chances will be many of their return to 
crime after their release. But this is a proposition admitted by 
all, denied by none. ..." 

" The process which under these circumstances in- 
duces in the prisoner habits of labor, is a process by 
which his self-respect, self-control and self-reliance are 
strengthened, and this is precisely what is wanted to 
make him a better man and better citizen." 

" Should it appear that agriculture, as has been 
widely found to be the case in Europe, is the most pow- 
erful agent in producing reform, it should be largely 
resorted to; though not certainly to the exclusion of 
mechanical industry. ' ' 

If industrial training be so powerful in developing 
the prostrate moral nature of the criminals, is it right 
to confine its benefits to them? Does not the entire 
population need it — and does not its power in elevat- 
ing the criminal assure us that it may elevate the en- 
tire population above their present plane of selfishness, 
competitive struggle, war, crime, anxiety, poverty, 
gloom, suicide, disease and premature death ? 

If we were governed by statesmen instead of poli- 
ticians (as we might have been if the people them- 
selves had been educated in sociology and morals) it 
would not have escaped their attention that it is 
cheaper to repair a break in a levee than to leave it 
open and endeavor to pump out the overflowing, 
waters; in other words, it is cheaper to close the inlet 
for crime than to fight it with courts, policemen, 
sheriffs, constables, jailers, prisons and gibbets. 

The Rev. J. B. Smith, fofmer chaplain of Sing Sing 
prison, estimated the criminal population of the State 
of New York at 175,000; in other words, about one in 
25 of the whole population is better adapted to prison 
life than freedom, and twelve or fourteen thousand are 
usually under incarceration. The criminal population 
of the city of New York alone imposes a burden on 



212 ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 

the city of about $6,000,000; but even that heavy tax 
gives only a partial protection to society — it does not 
prevent theft, robbery and murder. It simply restrains 
what is treated as an incurable disease of society, and 
instead of suppressing criminality, actually fosters it 
by herding criminals together to make all equally base 
by moral infection. And yet all these men and women 
on whom society declares war are our brothers and 
sisters, unfortunate in education by our neglect, yet 
possessing in some degree all our best emotions, and 
highly susceptible of reform. The same zealous chap- 
lain is reported as saying that after preaching every 
Sunday "for three years to 1500 of those who were 
supposed to be the worst criminals, he could say that 
he had greater hope of them than of an equal number 
of those who frequented our churches." 

So great has been the success of the reformatory 
penal system embracing labor for the convict, that in 
Denmark it reduced the number of prisoners to one 
half in twelve years after its adoption, and one of its 
penitentaries was closed and abandoned. In England 
by the same means the number of criminal sentences 
to penal servitude was diminished forty per cent in 
eight years. 

Industrial as an adjunct of moral and intellectual 
education is necessary to give each stability and value, 
to counteract the tendency to indolence, selfishness and 
animalism which develop and run riot where indus- 
trial and moral education are both neglected. It solves 
the problem of elevating the depraved and dangerous 
classes, and opens a brilliant future for the negro and 
Indian races of this country. If a tenth part of what 
we have expended in Indian wars had been expended 
in true moral and industrial education for Indian youth 
and for the men whose lawlessness on the frontier 
develops Indian wars, we might have had peace. 

I cannot insist too strongly upon the absolute ne- 
cessity of this industrial training, even if it did not 
develop the ability of the pupil for self-support. // is 
indispensable to the perfection of moral character. The 
whole fabric of social sentiment in society to-day is 



ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION, 21 3 

unsound, immoral, corrupt. It is derived from the 
robber ages in which feudal chieftains or conquering 
soldiers exacted all they craved by military power, 
and looked upon the useful industry of ploughman and 
mechanic with scorn. That felonious sentiment per- 
vades society to-day. Men respect themselves, and 
society respects them too, for the possession oi wealth, 
no matter by what unjust or fraudulent means ac- 
quired, and all are ashamed of any act of physical 
labor in public. To carry a considerable parcel in the 
street or to go to market with a basket is an act from 
which men and women who are not day-laborers gener- 
ally shrink with more shame than from the utterance of 
a falsehood. The scorn for labor so deeply impressed 
upon fashionable society is a scorn for duty, arising from 
that idolatry of brute force produced by long ages of 
war. This is an inversion of the moral nature, for labor 
is duty — it is the great unending duty of life, of the per- 
formance of which we should be proud, and an educa- 
tion w T hich does not impress the pupil with the duty 
of labor is morally unsound. 

All colleges have heretofore demoralized their pu- 
pils in reference to labor. They have given an educa- 
tion fit only for the robber baron or millionaire prince 
to whom literary display, literary polish or literary 
recreation was the chief object, military glory the 
most brilliant aim in life and chief theme of history, 
the laws of life and health a matter of profound indif- 
ference, the means of social improvement a question 
for the priest. 

American education has not outgrown the anti-demo- 
cratic spirit of the English system — more intense in 
England than anywhere else. "The instinctive Eng- 
lish disrespect for a man who is as poor as a church 
mouse," said an English magazine, " is never absent at 
English schools, but the visitor at the French lyce'e 
cannot shut his eyes to the fusion of ranks. The 
most casual glance shows him the rich and poor meet- 
ing together, and there is an entire fusion of sects as of 
fortunes." The same spirit of equality prevails among 
German students (which is unknown at Oxford and 



214 ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 

Cambridge), and any ostentatious display of wealth is 
looked upon with aversion. 

Prof. Le Conte says: "The English University sys- 
tem embodied in Oxford and Cambridge not only 
does not claim but scorns to be regarded as other 
than high general culture, and the highest ideal of life, 
something to be sought in the past with its ignorance, 
rather than the future with its higher development. 
Even when colleges leave the old routine and devote 
their curriculum mainly to the acquisition of knowl- 
edge, they neglect character, which is much more im- 
portant, and the reproach of observers against Ger- 
man schools which are profound in knowledge is that 
1 they have forgotten their business of education and 
train up no men for the Commonwealth/' 1 Alas! 
where are men truly trained in manhood and virtue 
in any country ? The whole spirit of college life has 
heretofore been intensely unpractical, and this has been 
fully shown when the national bounty in land was 
given to American colleges for agricultural and me- 
chanical education — a movement which has been upon 
the whole rather a failure than a success. . The educa- 
tion instituted has not made superior mechanics and 
farmers. President Anderson, of the Kansas State Agri- 
cultural College, has shown that from 1867 to 1874 not 
one of the graduates has become a farmer. They were 
qualified perhaps to become agricultural professors, 
but not farmers. Agriculture was not presented as a 
business in which by drill and practice they were to 
obtain superior success, but as a matter of scientific 
theory. Perhaps we shall have in time the practicality 
of European agricultural schools — but the true indus- 
trial school is antipodal to the old college. 

Systems of education that inculcate the degradation 
of labor are ruinous to a country's prosperity. Even 
if it be not expressly inculcated at college, the sentiment 
pervades most of the literature read by the young and 
is already established in fashionable society, and there- 
fore controls collegiate life unless counteracted by 
labor. This sentiment drives young men in multitudes 
to mercantile or clerking occupations and to profes- 



ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 21 5 

sional pursuits when they have no other qualification 
than indolence and vanity. The democratic sentiment 
on this subject is really more current under the German 
monarchy than in republican America. M. de Lave- 
leye, in the Revue de Deux Mondes, says that German 
land-owners 

"are aided by a class of employes who are not found in any other 
country. They are educated young men belonging to families in a 
good position, often just leaving an agricultural college, who remain 
for a certain time on some large estate to initiate themselves in the 
practical direction of one of their own. This novitiate is an ancient 
custom still preserved in many trades. Thus, frequently, the son 
of a rich hotel-keeper will not hesitate to enter another hotel as 
butler or waiter (Kellner), to be initiated into all the details of the 
service over which he will one day have to preside. When any one 
visits the farms {Rittergttter) he is astonished to see as superin- 
tendents the son of a banker, a baron, or a rich land-owner. These 
young people drive a cart or guide a plough. At noon they return, 
groom their horses, and then go and dress themselves and dine at the 
owner's table, to whom they are not inferior, either in instruction, 
birth or manners. After the meal they resume their working 
dress, and resume, without any false shame, their rustic occupation. 
Thus we find in feudal Prussia a trait of manners suited to the 
democratic society of the United States, and which hereafter will 
become general. In France, in England especially, a young man 
of the upper class would believe his dignity compromised in per- 
forming the work of a farm laborer." 

In Vienna young ladies of the aristocratic classes 
are sent to milliners and dressmakers to learn to make 
all kinds of garments, and with equal care they are 
instructed in cookery by the head cooks of wealthy 
houses — cooking being the finishing touch of a young 
lady's education prior to marriage engagements. 
Swimming, riding and walking are also a part of the 
training of Viennese ladies. 

Nothing but moral and industrial education can 
overcome that spirit of caste (based upon the scorn 
for labor) which is so injurious to a republic. "Caste," 
says Mrs. Mann, " is the deepest moral abyss that sep- 
arates human beings. Education is the only thing that 
can abolish it morally, and it must be education, that 
is, development, and not mere acquisition, which does 
not educate, but may add power to evil, as well as 
good." 



2l6 ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 

"The traditional American college," says Prof. Le 
Conte, " is modelled on the English system, while the 
ideal of reform in England is the German system." 

" The English university system is deeply imbedded 
in the structure of English society, and is therefore 
incapable of radical reform. The English universities 
are essentially finishing schools for the young nobility, 
i.e., for men who are supposed to be raised above the 
necessity of any life pursuit. The ideal of the English 
university culture is preparation for refined society. 
It is such a culture as befits a gentleman, and a noble- 
man. It is evident then that the idea of a gentleman 
and nobleman must be radically changed before the 
universities can be radically reformed." 

" Everywhere in Europe, and nowhere more than in 
Germany, society is burdened with an unnatural and 
irrational aristocracy. Hence there is also an un- 
natural and irrational aristocracy of intellectual pur- 
suits — unnatural and irrational, because founded on 
tradition and not on culture alone. To this aristocracy 
belong the three traditional liberal professions, the- 
ology, law, and medicine, together with the professions 
of scholar and scientific .investigator. The so-called 
technical professions, though equally intellectual, i.e. 
requiring equal general culture, are denied the cog- 
nomen of ' liberal,' and compelled to seek refuge in 
technical schools." 

This scorn of useful pursuits has been inherited 
from the ages of military domination and robbery. 
The survival of their spirit is seen in the prevalence of 
duelling in German universities. Efforts, however, 
have lately been made to suppress this duelling custom, 
and thirteen students of a Munich high-school have 
been condemned by a Bavarian magistrate to imprison- 
ment from three to six months for participation in 
duels. A similar improvement is seen in the report of 
the Board of Overseers of Harvard University, that the 
practice of hazing has ceased in that institution. 

Outbreaks of animalism must continue until the 
animal energies are provided with a proper outlet in 
industrial or gymnastic exercises. In English univer- 



ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 2\>] 

sities, according to the Pall Mall Gazette, " aristocratic 
idlers" are necessarily disorderly. "Wherever young 
men congregate in numbers, there are sure to be 
occasional outbursts of animal spirits; but elsewhere 
we have succeeded in preventing or promptly sup- 
pressing all outrages on public order and decency. 
But at the universities men are constantly being 
1 drawn/ held under the pump, or ducked in the foun- 
tain." 

* College education must be essentially changed before 
it can become the ally of progress and philanthropy, 
as it has heretofore been the ally of stolid conservatism 
and the reign of force. It must incorporate in itself 
useful labor and technological studies. It must sub- 
stitute, for the mere study of reigns, struggles and 
wars, the study of social conditions and the true 
social progress. It must embrace less of mathematics 
(except in technical works), and more of that political 
economy (as yet mostly unwritten) which explains all 
the sources of wealth and prosperity. It must substi- 
tute for the pedantry of dead languages the knowl- 
edge of the living body, its health, diseases and culture. 
It must substitute" for barren metaphysics the true 
knowledge of the soul, its grand affections, its marvel- 
lous intellectual powers, its far-reaching intuitions, 
and its mysterious relations to the body in which it 
dwells and the psychic universe which is its home. It 
must abolish the pedantic and tiresome stupidities of 
logic (which neither Locke nor Bacon could scoff out 
of the University), and cultivate with equal zeal the 
power of invention, original thought and dispassionate 
reason, and the Divine gift of intuition, the pioneer 
faculty of human progress. Lastly, it must discard 
theological dogma and formal prayers, and become 
truly religious with a fervent practical piety. 

Some time hereafter I may show the vast power of 
soul development which lies in man's relation to the 
supersensuous world of which we have but a hint or 
premonition in the grand careers of heroes, martyrs, 
and the true leaders of the ages. 

But efficient culture for any career must be a re- 



2l8 ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 

hearsal or practice \ and not a mere reading of the part. 
Honorable and grand careers are careers of industry, 
labor or struggle. The industry or labor must become 
a habit in the process of education, or else it will be 
excluded by the habits of dissipation, dawdling ineffi- 
ciency or dreamy speculation which will be established 
in its place. 

But the thought of such laborious training for youth 
will be repulsive to those who are familiar only with 
compulsory drill, and know nothing of educational 
attraction. The most efficient industrial training may 
be made far more attractive and interesting than the 
common duties of college life. 

The various occupations should be thoroughly taught 
by professors, and their practice would be an interest- 
ing application of principles, like a chemical experiment 
made to illustrate a lecture. Moreover, the practice 
should be social, by friendly groups whose conversa- 
tion, discussions and explanations over their work 
would make it interesting and give the additional 
stimulus of emulation to attain superior skill. Com- 
petitive groups raising beds of flowers or building 
fences or walls or carving wood would never lack for 
interest and animation. 

But there is one unfailing mainspring of cheerful 
industry which can render the most monotonous toil 
pleasant, and which is indispensable to moral educa- 
tion — that mainspring is song aided at times by instru- 
mental music. 

Soul-stirring martial music leads men through the 
toils, privations, and horrors of military campaigns, 
but it has been withheld from the campaigns of peace. 
There is no labor of the farm or workshop which will 
not become delightful when it ceases to be purely 
physical and becomes an exercise of the soul as well 
as the muscles by enthusiastic song. To sit by the 
roadside and hammer a pile of stones would seem the 
perfection of dreary monotony, but when a group of 
hammering laborers engage in song, the hammers will 
mark the cadence of the song, like the "Anvil Chorus," 
and seem but a pleasant accompaniment of the song. 



ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 2ig 

It is the materialism of labor that makes its stupefy- 
ing gloom — the concentration of all energy upon the 
muscles alone exhausts the brain and debases the soul, 
but when the soul is active as the body, the dignity of 
humanity is maintained, the pleasure and glory of life 
are found to be compatible with labor, and it no 
longer debases and impoverishes the soul, but gives it 
a material aid. 

The negroes of John McDonough, the New Orleans 
millionaire philanthropist, carried on their work un- 
flaggingly throughout the day sustained by continual 
song, and other builders wondered at their industry. 
Song made their labor light, and their song was in- 
spired by the hope of freedom which he had promised 
as the reward of faithful toil. A successful life will be 
the reward of the faithful student, and he can encoun- 
ter no toil that song may not render pleasant. 



ADDENDA. 



The most encouraging intelligence for the friends 
of industrial education is the progress actually made, 
and the following articles from New York newspapers 
are deemed worthy of reproduction : 

THE WILSON INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL. 

In one of the most densely populated parts of this city, sur- 
rounded on all sides by tenement-houses and liquor-saloons, in the 
midst of every influence that could tend to demoralize a good work 
and discourage its supporters, the Wilson Industrial School and 
Mission for Girls is situated. Founded by benevolence, fostered by 
philanthropy, and carried on by charity, for 29 years it has endured 
and at last triumphed over every difficulty which such an institu- 
tion could encounter. " The world forgetting, by the world for- 
got," its work has been unobtrusive, but wide and thorough. Ju- 
venile crime in this city during the year 1852 was startling, and 
excited a great, deal of comment and attention. It was evident that 
prosy Sunday-schools and occasional missionary visits were not 
reaching the undercurrent of vice and misery that unrestrainedly 
swept through the allies, cellars and attics where shame and degra- 
dation made their wretched home. The annals of the police courts 
told the nature of its flow, and a glance at the situation showed 
how difficult it would be to check it. But a few ladies undertook 
this step in the dark, and devising a new plan in a small upper 
room at No. 118 Avenue A, opened the first of the industrial 
schools which have since been recognized as an efficient agency in 
charitable work. They began by studying their ground and finding 
out the people whom they could hope to influence, and soon they 
succeeded in securing a few poor, ragged and unpromising subjects 
for their experiment. The plan was not complex, embracing morn- 
ing lessons in the common English branches, a hot dinner at noon 
and sewing lessons afterward. The key-note of their enterprise 
was to repress and not encourage the tendency to pauperism. 
A retrospect of their work at the end of the first year, 1853, was 
encouraging. The institution had been mainly established by Mrs. 
James P. Wilson, and, in tribute to her efforts, it was incorporated 
by an act of the Legislature, May 13, 1854, as the "Wilson Indus- 
trial School for Girls." As its object became known, benevolent 
ladies from all parts of the city enrolled their names as its sup- 



ADDENDA. 221 

porters, and evidenced their determination to see it through by- 
purchasing a building at No. 137 Avenue A, where better facilities 
might give it wider influence. They never lost sight of the idea 
which gave it birth, and, in order to silence the oft-repeated objec- 
tion of parents that the simple education of their girls didn't pay, 
wages were meted out to those who improved their opportunities 
and became skilful in the simple lessons in dress-making that they 
were taught. 

In 1869 the estate of a Mr. Rose presented the munificent sum of 
$20,000 to the school, and by the generous contributions of several 
wealthy ladies and gentlemen the large four-story building at the 
corner of Avenue A and St. Mark's place was purchased, and there 
the enterprise is at present situated. It has an average daily attend- 
ance of 200 girls, and the limits of their course of study have been 
very much increased. From 9 o'clock in the morning until noon 
the advantages of a day-school are given them, embracing a pri- 
mary, an intermediate, and an elementary department, and the 
thoroughness of their instruction is shown by the admission of over 
50 of the girls who had passed their final examination here into the 
grammar-schools of the city. At noon a hot dinner is served to 
them in their dining-hall, and, as they come from the very sub- 
stratum of society, this is by far the best meal they enjoy. The 
afternoon is devoted to sewing and housework, the latter being 
taught by competent ladies under the kitchen-garden system, which 
Miss E. Huntington has so extensively introduced. The idea upon 
which the system is founded occurred to her here, while endeavoring 
to invent some plan by which entire classes of girls might learn 
housework together. It was, of course, simple enough to show a 
single child how to wash dishes and make up a bed, but when it 
came to training a large class in the innumerable branches of house- 
hold art the difficulties were vastly increased. Six lessons compose 
the course, and in as many months a diligent student, under such 
experienced guidance as is furnished at the Industrial School, is 
prepared to offer herself in service, confident of her ability to per- 
form the complicated details of her work, so essential to the com- 
fort of a home. As dress-making and housework have no charms 
for many of the girls, the more interesting and difficult kinds of 
needle-work are also taught in an outfitting department. Many 
young ladies from the public schools come to secure tuition in this 
branch of the art. In fact, the sewing department of the Industrial 
School seems to be the head-quarters for ideas on this subject. Its 
teacher, Miss Louise J. Kirkwood, recently embodied her views in 
a book arranged for instruction, which, by a method of questions 
and answers, covers every department of plain work. The mate- 
rials upon which the girls work are generally scraps and ends of 
cloth furnished through the courtesy of a large number of dry-goods 
houses. When the girls have made an article of apparel it is thrown 
into the general stock, and may be earned out by meriting a cer- 
tain number of credit-marks for their diligence and deportment. 
Five hundred credit-marks will secure them a dress or pair of shoes, 



222 ADDENDA. 

200 a petticoat or a garment of lesser value. So that a child takes 
no little pride in a dress which she has been so long and patiently 
earning. About 700 of these garments are annually made up. 

For several years exercises of a devotional character, Sunday- 
schools and prayer-meetings had been held in the chapel of the 
school, and their influence became noticeable particularly in the 
families of the girls in daily attendance. In 1877, the Rev. Thomas 
J. May, who had recently graduated at the Union Theological 
Seminary, was secured as Pastor, and a thoroughly organized mis- 
sion was established. Its roll at present numbers about 200 com- 
municants, and its Sunday-school has an average attendance of 
400 scholars. The missionary work is vastly facilitated by the 
mothers' meeting, to which the mothers of the scholars are invited. 
Visits are made among the poor of the entire community, and 
every possible means is devised to carry comfort and cheer into the 
gloom and distress that fill the close-packed tenement-houses in the 
neighborhood. This practical and substantial method of carrying 
out the principles of Christianity has long since ceased to be an 
experiment and is now a success. Not a success in making money, 
for it has never been other than dependent on the goodness and 
bounty of its patrons: not a success in winning fame to any one, 
for its work has been done without noise or bustle; but successful 
in accomplishing its noble end — that of turning cloud into sunshine, 
woe into happiness, poverty into competence. Prominent among 
its Board of Managers, to whom these friendless girls are indebted 
for their education and acquirement, as well as for their daily bread, 
are Mrs. Jonathan Sturges, Mrs. Luther C. Clark, Mrs. A. R. 
Smith, Mrs. John L. Mason, Mrs. E. Bayard, Mrs. Robert R. 
Booth, Mrs. J. McLean Hildt, Mrs. R. W. Hurlbut, Mrs. George R. 
Lockwood, Mrs. H. H. G. Sharpless, and Mrs. S. P. Blagden. 

Several gentlemen of the Union League Club have rented the 
large basement of the Industrial School building, and have founded 
a very odd feature of the list of charitable enterprises. The ladies 
of the school had on one or two occasions invited the little raga- 
muffins of the street to the entertainments given by the girls in 
their hall. But the boys were not willing to be entertained and give 
nothing in return. So they would insist on shooting beans at the 
teachers, kissing the girls, and in every other possible way mani- 
fested their inclination to be agreeable. After the boys were gone, 
chairs were found to be dissected and the anatomy of their hair 
cushions and spring bottoms thoroughly discovered. Tables were 
turned upon end, and a state of discord and confusion everywhere 
prevailed. Boys were abandoned and their presence tabooed in the 
Industrial School. But this did not suit several of the gentlemen 
whose wives were interested in the mission, and they determined to 
give the boys a chance. Chief among these were Mr. E. H. Harriman 
and Mr. Samuel P. Blagden. The services of R. G. Fuller were 
secured as Superintendent of a boys' club. They met in the larg- 
est two rooms of the mission-house. But these quarters were both 
contracted and unsuitable, and the large basement of the same 



ADDENDA. 22$ 

house was tastefully fitted up, and every night from 7 o'clock until 
10 it is thronged with the little fellows. It cost several thousand 
dollars to start the movement, and requires about $2000 a year to 
keep it running. It has no connection with the Wilson Mission, 
other than that it rents a room in the mission-house. A library of 
about 400 books has been purchased, and while a third of them are 
used every night, owing to Mr. Fuller's system of checking the loss 
of a single volume is a rare occurrence. Games of every conceiv- 
able character are also provided, and are had for the asking. All 
the daily newspapers of the city have been courteously contributed 
to the club, and are every evening to be found on their files. But 
the principal charms of the room are the warmth, cleanliness and 
cheerfulness which at all times pervade even its remotest corner. 
One thousand six hundred and forty-three boys have applied for 
and received the current tickets of membership by virtue of which 
they enjoy the privileges of the club. And here the little fellows 
congregate, 300 or 400 during a single evening, and read books or 
papers, play chess, dominoes and checkers, and talk and laugh to- 
gether, and walk around the room with as much gusto, even, as 
their patrons of the Union League could raise. Mr. Fuller's sys- 
tem of engaging the interest of the boys for their club-room is ad- 
mirable. They are treated as gentlemen and have the full freedom 
of their room. When they overstep the bounds of decency they are 
quietly bounced, but they generally take too much pride in them- 
selves to run into such a disgrace. Mr. Fuller says they resort to 
every kind of craft to prevent losing their tickets. Larger boys, 
not members of the club, frequently hang around outside ready to 
snatch them away. Often they are mounted on blocks an inch 
thick, and are sometimes strung with twine about their necks and 
tucked away under their shirt. Mr. Fuller regards the work as in 
its inception yet. Already he is preparing to open the partition 
between the club-room and the next, and fit it up also for the 
rapidly increasing demand. Numbers of the little wretches are 
continually asking if they can sleep there, and though the Superin- 
tendent cannot now grant this favor, the wealthy supporters of the 
enterprise have bade him make a sleeping department and coffee- 
house ready. There is, of course, no limit to the work that may be 
done, and there seems to be none to the generosity of its patrons. — 
New York Times. 

THE LORD INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL. 

The report of the Lord Industrial School and Workingmen's 
Public Reading-room, 135 Greenwich Street, has been issued over 
the signature Mr. M. Deputy, visitor of the Children's Aid Society, 
with which the school is affiliated. The report sets forth the excel- 
lent work the school is doing in the First Ward, and introduces 
pictures illustrative of the poverty-stricken condition of that part of 
the city, which should induce the philanthropic to afford the school 
the means of largely extending the sphere of its labor. "To a 



224 ADDENDA. 

stranger visiting the school and looking over the group of children," 
says the report, "it might seem that but little impression could be 
made upon the mass of degraded humanity crowded into the . nar- 
row limits of the First Ward, by means of such feeble and apparently 
insignificant efforts. Such a reflection is natural, but when you re- 
member that two earnest-hearted women are day by day giving 
forth to these eighty, ninety or a hundred children the best and 
choicest treasures of their own heart and mind, and seeking to win 
their affection by walking before them in gentleness of spirit, scep- 
ticism as to results, in the mind of the thoughtful observer, quickly 
disappears. To the labors and anxieties of the school-room are also 
added their ministrations at the homes of the children. Thus it will 
be seen that at the present time — there being now one hundred and 
eleven on roll in the day-school, and seventy-two in the night-school 
— estimating five persons to a family, the teachers, by their work in 
the classes and at the homes of the pupils, reach, at the lowest esti- 
mate, over nine hundred persons." This is a good showing for the 
resources at the command of the school, and at the same time jus- 
tifies their increase. "The day-school," says the report, " is now 
in charge of Mrs. L. E. Hector, assisted in the younger classes by 
Miss C. L. Van Dyck — both of whom are well qualified for the 
positions they hold, and of whose zeal and fidelity too much can- 
not be said. Mrs. S. A. Seymour still maintains her place in the 
nigbt-school; for two or three years past, in consequence of the 
expense, we have restricted ourselves to one teacher. Mrs. Sey- 
mour wields an extensive influence over the youth of the Ward, 
and there are but few young girls or young men living within a 
mile of the school who do not know her by name." 

FREE TRAINING SCHOOLS. 

The free training schools of the Women's Educational and In- 
dustrial Society were first opened at the residence of one of its 
officers in April, 1873, for the purpose of training industrious and 
worthy girls and women in the various branches of female labor. 
Some half dozen sewing-machines were loaned by one of the large 
companies, and a competent teacher was placed in charge of the 
sewing-school. Classes in phonography, writing and book-keeping 
were organized and taught by ladies of the society, and an oppor- 
tunity was afforded for musical practice to several young ladies who 
were fitting for governesses. Although very little public mention was 
made of the opening of the schools, the applications for admission 
soon became so numerous as to necessitate their removal to a larger 
building, and they were located at 625 Broadway, in the art gal- 
leries, which, with machines, were placed at the disposal of the 
society by the Wheeler & Wilson Company. The daily average 
attendance has been 50, and the whole number taught about 1800. 
The following number have been instructed or placed by the efforts 
of the society: — Phonographers, 20; book-keepers, 77; lace-work- 
ers, 29; writers and copyists, 63; governesses, 56; saleswomen, 



ADDENDA. 225 

83; forewomen, 39; finishers, 43; hand-sewers on fine work, 73; 
housekeepers and managing servants, 36. There is now on the 
books an order for 200 intelligent and respectable girls to work at 
straw-sewing, a short distance on the New Haven Railroad, where 
their daily earnings from the beginning of their work will be from 
$1.50 to $2.50. Proof-reading will be now added to the other edu- 
cational branches. Daily contact with those social classes from 
which the army of sewing women is recruited has produced the 
conviction that there lies the material from which can be trained up 
a generation of household servants, whose excellence shall be 
equally advantageous to housekeepers and honorable to themselves, 
and to begin the training of these servants the society has removed 
to a suitable building at No. 47 East Tenth street, near Stewart's, 
six doors west of Broadway. One of the greatest evils of our social 
system is the uncomfortable home, which results equally from the 
inexperience of housekeepers and the incompetence of servants. 
There will be meetings of housekeepers and mothers to discuss the 
best means of instruction, and to insure sympathy and co-operation 
in the work of training. A coffee-room will be connected with the 
kitchen service, where good food will be supplied to those women 
who cannot apply to the many places for general relief which the 
bounty of our citizens has thrown open to the hungry, and dormi- 
tories established, not intended as promiscuous refuges, but as 
shelters for women who find themselves without work, money or 
home. Beef-tea and other suitable food for poor sick persons will be 
given, subject to the order of a physican. A reading-room will be 
open evenings, where healthy literature will be abundant, and lec- 
tures will be given upon hygiene, morals, and kindred subjects. The 
schools have received from private sources the sum of $3293.50. 
The salaries of sewing teachers and wages of porter have been 
$1300. All the educational branches are taught by members of 
the society, which numbers among its supporters some of the most 
charitable and public-spirited ladies and gentlemen of the city. The 
amount expended in the various departments of the school for sew- 
ing materials, salaries, advertising, temporary assistance to women 
while learning, and relief in cases of extreme necessity, has been 
$6,263.50. 

TRADE SCHOOLS, CORNER SIXTY-SEVENTH STREET AND FIRST AVENUE, 

NEW YORK. 

In the fail of 1880, under a joint arrangement between Mr. 
Richard T. Auchmuty of this city and the trustees of the Metropol- 
itan Museum of Art, a technical school for the industrial education 
of artisans in the elements of mechanics and of design was estab- 
lished in a building specially erected and presented by the former 
gentleman for the purpose, and located on the block extending 
from Sixty-seventh to Sixty-eighth street, in First avenue. 

The school opened November 1, and at once attracted marked 
interest and drew a large attendance. Classes were formed for 



226 ADDENDA. 

practical instruction in drawing and design, decoration in distem- 
per, modelling and carving, carriage draughting, and plumbing, and 
no less than 143 pupils were enrolled. The school was open day 
and evening. Lectures were given by specialists in different trades 
and arts, but a prime feature was made of shop instruction by fore- 
men and journeymen from different manufacturing establishments 
in this city. 

The membership was large in view of the experimental nature of 
the school, and compares favorably with that of similar institutions 
like the Worcester Free Institute and the Massachusetts Institute 
of Technology, etc. The membership of the different classes was 
as follows: Drawing and design, 31; modelling and carving, 27; 
carriage draughting, 21; decoration in distemper, 13; plumbing and 
sanitary engineering, 50. 

Since the schools were closed last spring, a wealthy gentleman 
of this city has given $50,000 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art 
to be devoted to the advancement of art education. 

It has therefore been deemed best to withdraw the art classes 
from the building at Sixty-eighth street, and to establish them on 
an independent basis at Glass Hall, in Thirty-fourth street, while 
in the meantime the artisan classes will remain as heretofore in the 
former building, and be known as the New York Trade School. 
Thus, instead of one institution for joint instruction in design and 
work, New York will now have two independent schools, one for 
the decorative and the other for the manual arts. The former will 
be in charge of Mr. John Buckingham, former manager of the 
schools, and the latter will be under the supervision of Mr. Chas. 
F. Wingate, C.E., who had charge last winter of the class in 
plumbing and sanitary engineering. 

SEWING IN A BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOL. 

An exhibition was lately given in this city of the results of the 
instruction in sewing in the Winthrop School — a girls' school with 
six grades. In the three lower grades they have lessons of an hour 
each twice a week, and in the upper three classes once a week. 
The pupils furnish their own work, bringing the material from 
home, the city having no expense except for needle and thread, in 
cases where the parents do not supply suitable sizes and quality. 
They are taught to sew in the best manner with rapidity; are taught 
the various stitches known to the artist in needle-work; are taught 
to make every variety of children's garments under the outer, 
every variety of under-garments for ladies and gentlemen, all 
branches of dress-making, cutting and fitting with facility, all 
branches of needle-work in tailoring; are taught the art of making 
and ornamenting table and bed linen, fancy work of endless variety, 
including fine lace-work and embroidery. The exhibition of work 
was remarkably neat and tasteful, some of it being exquisite in de- 
sign. The effect of the work upon the pupils is said to be excellent 
in every way. — Boston Commonwealth. 



CHAPTER IX. 
THE SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

Education, aims at elevation, and the ethical are the elevating 
powers. — Religion may be measured by the elevation of the 
weak and dependent. — The peculiar sphere of woman, the use- 
ful, not the pedantic. — Masculine education also should be utili- 
tarian. — The error of imitating the faults of masculine educa- 
tion. — Difference in character and occupations of men and 
women. — Four occupations of women, matron, operative, 
teacher, physician. — Instruction in matronship necessary. — 
Necessity and neglect of hygiene. — Perverted education. — 
Woman's right to industrial education.— Its recognition in the 
schools of France and Germany. — Instruction in household 
duties. — Education harmonizes the sexes. — European scientific 
schools. — Drawing a basis of industrial education. — Woman's 
natural adaptation to teaching, and especially to teaching boys 
and promoting virtue. — Testimony of M. Gambetta and Dr. 
Uellner. — Masculine unfitness as shown by Carlyle. — Neces- 
sity of associating the sexes. — Demoralizing tendency of male 
schools. — Women in medical schools. — Healing belongs to 
women as much as war to men. — Practicability of preserving 
health. — Modern education has affected it unfavorably. — 
Schools should train in hygiene. — Woman's power for eleva- 
tion, man's for progress. — Love the central faculty and elevat- 
ing power — Its aim identical with that of education, develop- 
ment and culture. — Woman should control both. — Should 
understand life and reproduction. — She controls two eternities, 
spiritual in heaven, posterity on earth. — She should not be 
enslaved in this. — The power of propagation allied with crime 
and degradation should be controlled by restraint on marriage. 
— Woman should be protected from unwise marriages by 
industrial independence and the right of choice. — Wiser teach- 
ing demands greater purity and truer religion. — Dr. Clarke's 
physiological objections. — Unanimous testimony of colleges 
as to female health and the benefits of coeducation. — Superior 
healthfulness of female students. — Superior adaptation of girls 
to study. — Female education adds to our wealth of intellect 
and elevation of society. — All proper education beneficial. — 
Great advantages of coeducation. — The promotion of conjugal 
harmony. — Ability of females to carry virtue to extremest de- 
velopment. — Necessity of physical culture and complete de- 
velopment. 



228 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

The rightful purpose of education is to elevate the 
human race, and this can be accomplished only by cul- 
tivating the elevating powers. The only elevating 
powers are the ethical or altruistic. These elevate the 
individual and consecrate the outpourings of his life to 
elevating all who can be reached. 

Such is the solidarity of humanity established by 
Divine law, that the elevation of self and the elevation 
of society are inseparably associated. This is the Di- 
vine truth, and the selfishness which antagonizes it is 
an absolute falsehood, and parent of innumerable fal- 
sities. Whoever in his false and deluded ambition 
inspired by selfishness endeavors to sustain himself 
simply by pulling down and crushing others, necessa- 
rily sinks himself to the lowest plane of existence and 
most effectively makes war on his own soul. 

Hence that community or nation rises most surely 
which is most helpful to others, and that race in which 
the two sexes are most lovingly devoted to each other 
is destined to the leadership of the world. One of the 
colored alumni of Hampton College in Virginia re- 
marked in his address, that "the true test of civiliza- 
tion in a race is the desire shown by that race to assist 
those whose position is more unfortunate than its own" 
— a very just remark. The civilization of men is shown 
in their desire to elevate the weaker sex, whose rights 
have everywhere been disregarded on account of their 
weakness. And their progress in civilization is the 
result of that effort to elevate the mothers of human- 
ity — an effort which expresses the sum total of their 
moral and religious energy. 

Ethical education must therefore comprehend the 
elevation of woman as one of the greatest of all duties 
— a duty to be inculcated in education upon every pu- 
pil, and to be realized in a higher education for woman, 
adapted to her nature and her inevitable career. 

It is love, which, according to Jesus Christ, is the 
synonym of religion, which leads us to perform this 
duty to the weaker sex, in doing which we perform a 
duty to all mankind, and elevate all future generations. 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 229 

Woman epitomizes or represents all future humanity, 
and therefore in serving her we serve the race. The 
proper service of woman consists in giving her not 
only support and honor, but development or educa- 
tion, and the extent to which this is given is a measure 
of the enlightened religion of the times. 

The sphere of woman's existence differs so widely 
from that of man as to require a difference in educa- 
tion, and I should esteem it very unfortunate indeed 
if the present ambition of women, shown in their ef- 
forts to enter Harvard College, should lead to no othex 
result than simply going through the old-fashioned 
masculine curriculum of four years, with its predomi- 
nance of Greek, Latin, mathematics, and metaphysics, 
instead of selecting for themselves what is most whole- 
some and appropriate. 

The value of a woman's education is tested by the 
public opinion of men. The eagerness with which they 
honor and admire accomplished women, and seek their 
hands in marriage, proves them to be superior women 
in the opinion of mankind, and we have no other 
authoritative tribunal. I venture to say that the grad- 
uates of the regular Harvard course, with diplomas in 
hand, would find themselves less admired, less sought 
in society or in marriage, than country girls who had 
obtained a good English education, and had given 
much of their time to proper reading — who had ob- 
tained a good stock of rosy health, knowledge of 
society, and familiarity with domestic duties. 

No matter what the literary education may be, no 
woman is qualified to win our love who has not the 
abundant health, the exuberant spirits, the depth of 
feeling and the grace of manner which make her 
society so charming. If she loses these, or if she im- 
pairs them, not all the contents of classic dictionaries 
and clyclopaedias can repair the loss or win that hom- 
age which her nature craves. She needs a higher ed- 
cation, it is true, but it should be an education to make 
her a more perfect woman, not an education to imitate 
men — an education to fit her real life, not to prepare her 



230 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

to be a professor of dead languages or mathematics, 
unless that is really her vocation. 

It is especially true of woman even more than of 
man that 

li To know that which before us lies in daily life 
Is the prime wisdom." 

For woman is not by her constitution as purely intel- 
lectual or as discursively intellectual as man. She 
could not be a perfect woman if she lived in that va- 
grant freedom of restless speculation which roams over 
the universe, forgetting her home — which buries itself 
in calculations of the period of planets and comets, in 
exploring hieroglyphics, or constructing vast steam- 
engines, while society is shut out of places of study — 
or which occupies itself in absent-minded meditation, 
knowing nothing around us, or in metaphysical sys- 
tems, which have no application, no utility, no availa- 
ble meaning. The constitution of her brain is such 
that she must love, must take a practical interest in 
persons and things, and cannot, like man, become deep- 
ly interested in things which are profound and difficult, 
but not useful. The profound study of mathematics, 
dead languages and metaphysics is therefore especial- 
ly contrary to the nature and destination of woman. 
Let men be soldiers, engineers, mechanics, farmers, 
book-worms, or hermits; women have a different at- 
traction — to home and society, children and flowers. 

If the different destinies of men and women demand 
a different education, it does not follow that either is 
inferior. 

The chief difference required is that the education 
of woman should be more directly and thoroughly 
utilitarian and humanitarian — that it should be less ab- 
strusely scientific and speculative, less mathematical, 
less dynamic, political, military, and financial; but 
more hygienic, medical, ethical, aesthetic, and socially 
domestic. But the very things in which female edu- 
cation should be emphasized are also those in which 
male education has been signally deficient, and the 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 23 1 

reform which is needed in our college system would 
bring the male curriculum very near to what reason 
demands for women. 

I desire therefore to see the demands of the female 
pupil gratified in colleges of co-education in order that 
they may influence masculine education and lift it out 
of the deep and well-worn rut in which it has been 
making its slow progress. 

I do not insist on any wide difference between male 
and female education, when male education shall have 
been properly reformed, but I do insist that female 
education shall be a very different thing from what 
male education has been, though perhaps not very dif- 
ferent from what it ought to be. It is deeply to be re- 
gretted that the false ideal of male education should 
ever be adopted in schools for women to whom that 
barren ideal is so sadly inappropriate.* 

Girton College (for women), in England, has fol- 
lowed strictly the curriculum and methods of Cam- 
bridge University, in spite of the remonstrances of the 
friends of progress, its directors being animated by a 
determination to show that women were fully able to 
compete with men in the struggle for the honors of 
what had been deemed the highest culture. The 
effort was entirely successful, and since then Newnham 
Hall, Cambridge, has been established on a more lib- 
eral plan, in 1875; two halls for women have been estab- 
lished in Oxford; London University has been opened 
for degrees to women, and finally the medical profes- 
sion opened to women after a long and arduous strug- 
gle against the bigotry of physicians and mobocratic 
hostility of ill-mannered medical students. The Medi- 
cal College for Women at London was opened in 1874, 
and in 1877 women began to receive medical diplomas 

* " Mrs. Carlyle," says a biographer, M talked of her own life and 
the mistake of over-educating people. She believes that her health 
has been injured for life by beginning Latin with a little tutor, at 
5 or 6 years old, then going to the Rector's school to continue it, 
then having a tutor at home. Irving being her tutor, and of 
equally excitable intellect, was delighted to push her through every 
study; then he introduced her to Carlyle." 



232 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

from other colleges and examining bodies in conse- 
quence of the act of parliament which made them 
admissible. 

Thus are the spheres of male and female education 
becoming identified in spite of the differences in char- 
acter, constitution, and destiny. Another cause which 
tends to obliterate the difference is the large number of 
young women who are not destined to matrimonial life, 
or who escape maternity, and who have to enter upon 
the same industrial struggle as men, with the disad- 
vantages of inferior strength and greater social restric- 
tions, and limitations in labor. But no equality of 
education or competition in labor can ever equalize 
the sexes by obliterating that constitutional differ- 
ence which is eternal and belongs to soul as well as 
body. 

The difference between men and women is in physi- 
cal force and the elements of character which belong 
to that force. In man the muscles are larger; the 
chest is larger in circumference; the respiration is 
deeper from the lower descent of the diaphragm, and 
the voice therefore deeper in tone and more power- 
ful. 

There is a difference between the male and female 
brain, as I have ascertained by comparative measure- 
ments of heads, which I have not seen recently stated 
by any author, not even by the phrenologists, who 
have had the opportunity to observe it. The differ- 
ences are but slight in the anterior and superior 
regions of the head, the appearance of difference being 
chiefly due to the superior thickness of the bones and 
bony ridges of the masculine head. In plain English, 
men are more thick-skulled. But at the basis of the 
brain, which is the seat of animal life, muscular energy, 
passions and appetites, the male head is more amply 
developed. There are some masculine women who 
have a stronger base to the brain than some feminine 
men, but these are exceptions to the rule. Women in 
consequence of this conformation are less addicted to 
crime and sensuality, and more controlled by love, re- 
ligion and spirituality. They have the greater moral 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN, 233 

and intellectual refinement which comes from the 
superior half of the brain. Hence their delicate, im- 
pressible emotions, quick intuitions, presentiments and 
psychometric sense of character. In art they have 
greater delicacy in light shade and coloring, and it is 
a remarkable fact that women are not only more deli- 
cate in colors, but are very rarely color-blind. The 
examination of over eighteen thousand by the Ophthal- 
mological Society at London indicated that men were 
twelve times as liable as women to color-blindness. 
If statistics could be obtained as to the ethical percep- 
tions, it would probably be found that men are ten 
times as liable to failing in the nicer perceptions of 
social duties. 

The animal courage, restless energy, physical 
strength and excitable passions belonging to men 
indicate their sphere to be that of out-door labor, loco- 
motion, toil, struggle, and battle. Hence, all over the 
world out-door employments belong to men, in-door 
employments to women. War and hunting belong 
to men alone. It is for them to clear the forests, till 
the land, open the mines, build the roads, sail the 
ships, drive the wagons and the herds, butcher the 
cattle, build the houses, and swing the hammer and 
the axe. 

It is for women to occupy the house and make it a 
comfortable home, to prepare the food, the clothing 
and ornaments, the music and festivity, the gardens 
and flowers — to rear the young, to take care of the 
sick and wounded, the old and infirm — to handle the 
scissors and needle, the spindle and the loom, the 
broom and the mangle, the oven, and the innumerable 
varieties of food — to take care of the accumulations 
of industry, to keep the accounts, to manage the as- 
sistants or servants, teach the children, and last, not 
least, to prepare and give the healing medicines and 
the kind attentions that save and restore the sick. 

The sphere of man is that of war and force — the 
sphere of woman is that of peace and gentle ministra- 
tions. Woman is intermediate between the man, the 
boy, and the angel, There is enough for each in their 



234 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

own sphere, and if each is to do full duty, each must 
be kept in the separate sphere. I object to woman's 
intrusion on the sphere of man — I object to man's in- 
trusion on the sphere of woman. Women generally 
have not gone beyond their sphere — have not really 
filled it — but men have intruded on the sphere of 
women until they are crowded to the wall and often 
driven by poverty and lack of employment to early 
death or to vicious lives. The greater portion of the 
few crimes committed by women is due to their be- 
ing crowded out of profitable employment. 

The employments of women are of four great 
classes: 

i. That of the matron, who keeps a house, provides 
for its inmates, and rears a family. 

2. The in-door operative, who carries on some form 
of industry. 

3. The teacher, who educates the young. 

4. The healer or physician, who restores the sick. 
What special education is necessary for these four 

modes of life ? 

1. The matron requires especial instruction in all 
the arts of household economy. The preparation of 
food and clothing, furniture, gardening, floriculture, 
ventilation and warming, house-planning, the dairy, 
poultry, management of servants, society, conversa- 
tion, music, recreation, and social morals, are all mat- 
ters in which she should be thoroughly instructed. 
And although there are many happy homes where 
daughters are instructed in these things, there are 
millions in which the instruction is utterly inadequate, 
and none in which it is complete. There is scarcely one 
in ten thousand of either sex, at present, who under- 
stands the principles of ventilation and warming, 
which are necessary to health, -and thousands are dy- 
ing from the consequences of this ignorance — dying 
from colds, from pneumonia, from rheumatism, fever, 
consumption, and from a gradual undermining of 
health. Thousands, too, lose health from unwholesome 
cookery, badly chosen food, metallic poisons of tin, 
lead, zinc and copper introduced into the food and 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 235 

drink — and from malaria, which a very small amount of 
knowledge would suppress. 

We need in every school attended by women a pro- 
fessor of household duty and matronship, whose duty 
it should be to prepare women to make good wives by 
a thorough knowledge and practice of every matronly 
duty. If this were the case, and if it were rightly 
conducted, there might be a degree of M H., or mis- 
tress of the household, and a degree of A.M., or 
accomplished matron, which in the course of time 
would be considered as necessary for every candidate 
for matrimony as the degree of M.D. is for a candi- 
date for medical practice. 

The omission of household duty from the curricu- 
lum of female schools is one reason why there is so 
much dissatisfaction with the fashionable female edu- 
cation.* But there is a still more fatal defect in fit- 

* At the Lasell Seminary, Auburndale, Mass., young ladies are 
taught by Miss Parloa to understand cooking in all its details. 
These lessons are free to members of the school, and judging 
from the testimonials of its patrons, these lessons have proved very 
successful. Classes are instructed in the mysteries of dress-making 
and millinery. The object of the school is to make women self- 
helpful and independent. All communications of inquiry should 
be addressed to M. C. C. Bragdon, Lasell Seminary, Auburndale, 
Mass." 

A correspondent of the Tribune gives her observations on this 
subject quite graphically: 

"The first thing which suggested this to my mind was the em- 
ployment of a nurse — a freed woman, or rather girl — to take care 
of a baby. Hearing the child cry bitterly, I went to the nursery 
door, and there found the child seated on the bed, the nurse stand- 
ing in front, spouting and shouting poetry and prose from a book 
of elocution. When I expostulated with her she said, " O missus, 
we do have such fine exhibitions at our school, and I don't want to 
forget how to read these pieces in the proper way." 

" What do you learn at school 7" 

"We learn — "and she added a string of fine names, 'ologies, 
etc. 

" Do they not teach you to sew?" 

" O no, ma'am." 

11 Nor to cook ?" 

11 O no, ma'am; we have not time. We are six hours studying, 
and then evenings we have exhibitions and practise pieces, and 
pans of plays to act, and that takes all our time." 



2$6 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

ting women with a proper education. It is the lack of 
physiological and medical knowledge. 

Women are deeply wronged in this, that they are 
not educated for their chief or paramount duty in 
life, to which all their hopes, their affections, and their 
energies concentrate — the rearing of children. They 
are put forth to encounter the labors, the dangers and 
trials of maternity, often in the most profound ignor- 
ance, and a vast amount of disease and death is the 



I thought to myself, 300 boys and girls — educated ! learning 
these things ! and for what? The one cry is " Education," just as 
it is all over the land — and the girls are educated — save the mark. 
The girls marry: they cannot make bread, cannot cook, nor make 
their husbands' shirts, nor even wash and iron well. The young 
men admired them as " students," showing off well in exhibitions, 
but when they find they have neither good food nor decent clothing, 
they "get mad," it ends in a quarrel, they separate, and then 
alas for morality ! All know of scores of just such cases among 
the freedmen of the South, where education (so called) is proving 
the cause of vice. ' The people gain mere book knowledge, and 
very superficial at that, to the exclusion of all knowledge of daily 
life, the cooking, sewing, the neatness and thrift, which make up 
the sum of daily life. And this is not at all, alas ! peculiar to the 
South, or to people of one color. Many girls go on rather longer, 
in schools if not in colleges (we do not know where to draw the line), 
and it has been study, study, all their days, with " literary pursuits" 
between times, in the reading of sensation papers and flashy novels. 
As a rule — for of course there are exceptions — of the ordinary 
daily routine of a woman's life, sewing, cooking, ordering a house- 
hold, washing and ironing, and the care of the children, they know 
little or nothing, and go on in the blind faith that these things will 
come somehow. And they often are somehow, as many a man 
knows to his cost. The man is disappointed and is cross; the 
woman cries and frets, but this does not teach her anything; he 
goes elsewhere for good food, or takes to drinking and smoking to 
soothe the rasped nerves of dyspepsia. 

" If girls do not learn these useful things when they are young, 
they will, as a rule, never learn them well. Let us take a large 
school in New York, of which I know something, where girls of 
comparatively humble parentage are carried through conic sections, 
trigonometry, Latin, astronomy, and so forth. Suppose instead 
of being called out to solve a problem in algebra, they were asked 
to make two loaves of bread, how many could do it? Or to make 
a shirt ? Or even to starch and iron one ? And yet they will, as a 
rule, marry men who expect to work, and who might expect their 
wives to work also." 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 237 

consequence — they suffer in broken health — they suffer 
in children that are puny and die early or die of prevent- 
able diseases, or children that are morally deformed or 
criminal, and a constant source of anxiety and grief to 
the parents, who have not known how to educate them. 
This physiological degeneracy, especially in fashion- 
able life, has attracted the attention of physicians. " I 
determined," says Dr. P., " to find out why it was that in 
twenty-five years of my membership in the guild of 
medicine the entire physical organization of a vast 
number of our women should be so different from what 
it was when I was student." He found the cause in 
their defective education and physiological ignorance. 

There is no greater philanthropic work in education 
to be found, for which future ages may be grateful, 
than the introduction of hygienic knowledge in the 
education of young women; not the mere smattering 
of physiology and hygiene found in some text-books, 
but the entire science of health, of diseases, and of 
management in reference to mothers and children, 
embracing not only the management of diseases, but 
the laws of hereditary descent and of moral improve- 
ment. The establishment of a department of hygiene 
and maternity in all female schools would be a bless- 
ing to future ages, which would compare in value 
with the Protestant Reformation or with the Ameri- 
can Declaration of Independence. Our present neg- 
lect is cruelty to women and cruelty to posterity. In 
this matter we are violating the laws of life and most 
sacred duties, and the penalty falls upon society with- 
out pardon or mercy — there is no escaping the penalty 
of violated law. 

A New York physician, who sent out 3500 circulars 
with questions as to whether young women in schools 
were instructed in female anatomy and physiology, 
received only five affirmative answers. " There is no 
reason," said he, u no common sense, no practical hu- 
manity," in our female schools generally. " Not one 
per cent of those who leave these schools can give a 
lucid explanation of womanhood, not one has the re- 
motest notion of what true, actual womanly existence 



238 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OP WOMAN. 

means. " The system of female education has been 
one of physiological ignorance and physiological de- 
bilitation by restricting exercise and amusement. A 
graphic writer in the Nineteenth Century says: 

" On all sides a school-girl is shut up in a very prison-house of 
decorum; every healthful amusement is denied her as 'unlady- 
like; ' she is imperatively taught to curb her youthful spirits in so 
far as these may sometimes be able to struggle above the weight 
of a mistaken discipline; she is nurtured during her growth on the 
unhealthy soil of ennui in a depressing atmosphere of dulness; 
and, as too frequent a consequence, she leaves school with a sickly 
and enervated constitution, capable, perhaps, of high vivacity for 
a short time, but speedily collapsing under the strain of a few hours 
of bodily or mental activity. All this is the precise reverse of what 
school life ought to be. I should like to see all girls' schools pro- 
fessedly regarded as places of recreation no less than places of ed- 
ucation; as places of bodily no less than as places of mental cul- 
ture. At present, in most schools, with all in-door romping stern- 
ly forbidden as unladylike, all out-door games regarded as impos- 
sible recreations for girls of their age and social position, the un- 
fortunate prisoners are restricted in their exercises to a properly 
prison-like routine — a daily walk in twos and twos, all bound by 
the stiff chains of conventionality, with nothing to relieve the dull 
monotony of the well-known way, and one's constant companion 
being determined, not by any entertaining suitability of tempera- 
ment, but by an accidental suitability of height. Could there be 
devised a more ludicrous caricature of all that we mean by recrea- 
tion ? Do we want to know the remedy? The remedy is as sim- 
ple as the abuse is patent. Let every school whose situation per- 
mits be provided with a good play-ground, and let every form of 
out-door amusement be encouraged to the utmost. Of course I shall 
be met by the objection that by encouraging active out-door games 
among school-girls, we should run off the bloom, so to speak, of 
refinement, and that, as a result, we should tend to impair the deli- 
cate growth of that which we all recognize as of paramount value 
in education — good breeding. I can only say I am fully persuaded, 
by the results I have seen, that such would not be the case. The 
feelings and the manners of a lady are imparted by inheritance 
and by the society in which she lives, and no amount of drilling by 
school-mistresses will produce more than an artificial imitation of 
the natural reality." 

Girton College will set a better example. A visitor 
who gives an interesting description says: 

"What few of the young ladies we are lucky enough to meet 
during our tour of inspection have a glow of health and life on 
their pretty faces well worth seeing, and fully accounted for by a 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 239 

passing glimpse, through one of the upper windows, of a lawn-ten- 
nis ground below, upon which four of the students are in the full 
swing of a well-contested game, bounding to and fro like moun- 
tain goats, and laughing as merrily as if degree examinations were 
things unknown." 

The second class of pursuits for women is that of 
in-door industries, such as factory labors, manufacture 
of male and female clothing, printing, telegraphing, 
drawing and painting, photography, book-keeping, 
shop-keeping, and thirty or forty handicrafts. 

For women who have such aims I demand, as a right, 
industrial education. Industrial education is equally 
the right of all of both sexes. It is especially the right 
of women because of their more delicate constitution 
and more limited access to profitable enagements.* 

The thousands whom necessity forces immediately 
into industrial vocations have very little time to give 
to education. If they can obtain reading and writing, 
arithmetic, geography, and hygiene, they must go at 
once to prepare for work ; and it will be said that the 
school is not the proper place for preparation — that it 
must be made in the shop; but this is a great error. 
There is very little regular and useful instruction in 
shops — more may be learned in one month of direct 
industrial instruction than will be learned in five or 
ten months in the shops. Even six months of indus- 
trial instruction, with proper means, will be sufficient 
to impart a knowledge of three or four lucrative em- 
ployments, skill in Which may afterward be perfected 
by practice. 

Every large institution should have the means of 
giving industrial training in the occupations by which 
women may make themselves self-supporting and in- 
dependent of the charity of friends, or of marrying for 
a support where they have no love. 

* The Hudson River Industrial School for Girls between ten and 
fifteen years of age is a worthy effort to provide for homeless girls, 
and those guilty of petty offences, by separate cottage homes on a 
large rural estate, each under the care of a matron, by whom they 
will be taught useful industries, fitting them for self-support, and 
ultimately provided with homes. 



240 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN 

Women at present constitute a very large portion 
of the laboring and artisan classes, and the wealth of 
the nation depends much upon making their labor 
profitable. Educated labor is from two to three times 
as valuable as unskilled labor; and knowing this fact, 
France, England, and Germany are endeavoring, by 
industrial or technical education, to render their in- 
dustrial classes more skilful and prosperous. 

Republican France recognizes the rights of women 
to an equal education, and in the new system just es- 
tablished girls are to be instructed not only in science 
and literature, but in hygienics, domestic economy, 
needle-work, drawing, modelling, gymnastics, and the 
laws and customs of society, as well as in morals and 
such religious views as the parents desire. More than 
two thousand girls are already in the drawing and 
painting classes of the principal schools, and the city 
of Paris has recently opened seven new schools of de- 
sign for girls exclusively. Agricultural schools have 
also been established for girls, which is a movement 
in advance of American teachers. One of these near 
Rouen has three hundred girl pupils, from ten to 
eighteen years of age, who cultivate a farm of four 
hundred acres under the control of twenty-five sisters; 
and their farming is so successful as to win medals 
from agricultural societies. 

At L'Ecole Professionelle, in Paris, which is highly 
appreciated, and has had about four hundred pupils 
in attendance, women are taught thoroughly in dress- 
making, drawing, book-keeping, wood-carving, and 
painting on porcelain, so that they can at once earn 
their living by these vocations. 

In England and Scotland there are eighteen practi 
cal schools for women in which useful occupations are 
taught. 

As women are capable of pursuing satisfactorily at 
least three fourths of the occupations filled by men, 
there is a steady increase in the United States of 
women's vocations and women's industrial schools. In 
the School of Design at Cincinnati, recently, there 
were two hundred and fortv-three females, a majority 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN, 24I 

of the whole number. In wood-working there were 
one hundred and thirty-eight females, and but seven- 
teen males. Evidently the day of women's industrial 
and intellectual emancipation is near at hand. 

In Berlin a highly practical school for girls has lately 
been established, with lodging-rooms, working-rooms 
and a very large kitchen. Various trades are to be 
taught by skilful persons in all the branches fitting for 
mercantile and banking establishments. The instruc- 
tion in cooking is given by an accomplished cook, and 
young ladies resort to this school to qualify themselves 
for house-keeping.* . 

* Schools of Housework. — The London News says: "It would 
be an excellent thing if some schools for young women, similar to 
those which have recently been founded in Wurtemberg, were 
opened in England, as the course of training for household duties 
imparted at them cannot fail to be of the greatest utility. These 
Wurtemberg schools, intended for the daughters of small farmers 
and peasants, are only open during the winter months, and each 
of them accommodates about thirty pupils, the fee for tuition being 
about twenty-five shillings, while a sum equivalent to ninepence a 
day is charged for board and lodging. The manageress of- the 
school sees that her pupils are taught cooking, washing, house- 
cleaning, etc., while the ordinary village school-master is employed 
in the afternoon to give them lessons in reading and writing. A 
medical man also gives lectures on natural history and domestic 
medicine, so that nothing is neglected which is likely to make good 
housewives of them. The system of Herr Clauson-Kaas, which 
was first applied in Denmark, is also making its way in North Ger- 
many, though many of the masters do not much like the idea of 
having to teach the lads in their schools the rudiments of their fu- 
ture calling, for this is what the Clauson-Kaas system practically 
amounts to. That it might be introduced, with certain modifica- 
tions, into England is probable enough, but more importance at- 
taches to the Wurtemberg experiment, which has in a very short 
space of time done wonders there, and which, if it succeeded in this 
country, would do much to lengthen the lives of the agricultural 
laborer and the small farmer." 

A writer in the Cornhill Magazine says : "I was sixteen years of 
age, and, according to a common custom of German families, I 
had to go for twelve months to what is called a cookery school, in 
order to learn there everything that is expected from a German 
housewife. This custom is not universal in Germany, but it pre- 
vails in many districts, especially in the north-western provinces. 
A girl may be a countess or a baroness, a clergyman's or a gen- 
eral's daughter, or else the child of a butcher or a shoemaker. It 



242 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

In the school which the Rev. D. L. Moody is estab- 
lishing at Northfield, Mass., the girls are to be taught 
cooking and house-keeping. Thus the industrial prin- 
ciple is coming into general recognition. 

Industrial education not only enriches the nation 
beyond its rivals, but enriches and elevates the poorer 
classes. 

This is true democracy, to elevate and enlighten 
the laboring citizens, and it is the only process which 
will guarantee the existence of our Republic. The 
industrial elevation of women is even more important 
than that of men, for in elevating the condition of 
women you elevate their posterity thenceforth and 
forever. 

It must not be forgotten that this higher education 
is as important to the married woman as to the one 
who struggles for herself without a husband. There 
is a continual separation and tendency to alienation 
between the intelligent husband and the wife whose 
intelligence does not command his respect. Their in- 
tercourse necessarily diminishes, and the man becomes 
more arbitrary in his authority. 

This view was expressed by a member of the French 
Legislature in discussing Minister Ferry's educational 
bill: 

" M. Ferouillet thought the great remedy for matrimonial broils 
would be the establishment of equal rights to intellectual light. He 

does not signify how or where she has been born, or what her rank 
is. The manners of her country require that, whoever she is, she 
should know how to cook, wash, iron, to clean the rooms, mend 
the linen, and plant the garden. Of course I do not mean to say 
that all girls, even in those parts of Germany where the custom is 
most general, are forced to undergo this training. Yet the good 
sense of the majority makes them alive to its advantages. For it 
must" be remembered that whether a woman's future life obliges 
her to do these things herself or not, and even if her position in 
the world allows her to keep as many servants as she chooses, these 
very servants, being German servants, expect her to know how to 
do all the work which she requires of them. There is only one 
difference between a baroness and the child of a tradesman. The 
latter learns the several duties I have mentioned in her father's 
house and from her mother; while the former leaves her home to 
learn the same details of domestic service in a strange house. 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 243 

maintained that girls had as fine minds as boys, but that they had, 
owing to theological prejudice, been kept down. By granting jus- 
tice to them they would be rendered apt to hereafter associate 
themselves with the thoughts, sentiments, pursuits, and moral and 
intellectual aspirations of their husbands." 

In accordance with such views the cities of St. Pe- 
tersburg, Moscow and Kief have ample provision for 
training women in the sciences. The St. Petersburg 
University for Women had recently more than nine 
hundred students. 

In the unanimous exertions of European govern- 
ments, by the establishment of technical schools, one 
principle or method is universally prominent. It is 
universally conceded that drawing is the intellectual 
basis of the productive arts. The trade schools of 
Germany for apprentices and master-workmen give 
about one half of their time to drawing, and an equal 
time is given in the technical universities and colleges. 
It is the same in France, and the French Imperial 
Commission pronounce drawing the most important 
of all studies for the technical education of both 
sexes. 

Drawing is a very appropriate study for women — 
it is one in which many can excel, and, as it is the key 
to the useful arts, it will open to many a woman the 
road to independence and prosperity. 

In one of the large foundries of New York, where 
steamships were constructed, some visitors were pass- 
ing through, and a young lady stopped to tell one of 
the workmen that he was not finishing his work prop- 
erly. He paid but little attention, and she brought 
the foreman, explained the error, and had it corrected. 
Her father was an .engineer, and her experience in 
drawing his plans qualified her to superintend a shop. 

3. Women should be trained as professional teachers 
because it is especially their natural sphere by divine 
appointment. If women as mothers are almost the 
sole teachers of the first seven years of life — if they of 
necessity as mothers give the young about one half of 
all the intellectual education they receive, and about 
four fifths if not nine tenths of all their moral instruc- 



244 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

tion — if they have an especial vocation to this business, 
which they carry on without reward, from motives of 
love and duty — it is desirable that they should be en- 
gaged in the later as well as the earlier part of the 
task. If they are properly trained, women are prefer- 
able to men as teachers, at least for boys, for two rea- 
sons. First, oral instruction is the most rapid and 
delightful way of imparting and acquiring knowledge, 
and therefore should be the leading method in all 
schools. Nature designed women for oral teachers of 
the young, because they have more love of children, 
are more disposed to talk to them, and are more talk- 
ative generally than men. When the child is too 
young to understand anything, the woman talks baby- 
talk to him, and thus initiates him into language, a 
process which men generally do not appreciate. Al- 
though women generally do not desire to mount the 
rostrum in public, they make capital lecturers to their 
pupils. Second, education is sadly deficient in the 
moral element, and most boys' schools are rough and 
turbulent affairs, where they unlearn so large a part 
of their mothers' moral teaching as to make many un- 
willing to have their good children contaminated by 
sending them to school. Therefore we should con- 
tinue the motherly influence by a good motherly wo- 
man as a teacher. Even if she does not teach morals 
directly, she has a personal magnetism, a soothing in- 
fluence, like that of the mother at home. I would not 
confine this instruction, either, to the very young, for 
there could be no better method of bringing a school 
of disorderly young men under the influence of modest 
and refined sentiments than to give them a capable 
professor in the person of a lovely woman, and if they 
were especially incorrigible I would give them not only 
a female professor but an equal number of young wo- 
men as fellow-students. This association gives a 
more wholesome stimulus than male universities know. 
Relying on this, they were enabled at Antioch to dis- 
pense entirely with emulation, with marks for honors 
or merits, and with every species of honors. 

That woman is peculiarly fitted to be the teacher of 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 245 

morals, manners and religion is manifest in the fact 
that women constitute a large majority of the church 
members, that they constitute the refining influence 
in all assemblies and in the fireside circle, and that 
every mother is ex officio a. professor of morals, man- 
ners and religion to her children. It has been proven 
whenever women have taken charge of hospitals, pris- 
ons,' and schools of reform. The female convicts of 
the Indiana State Prison were about eight years ago 
turned over to the management of Sarah Smith to 
test the power of womanly kindness for reformation. 
She now has charge of about two hundred women and 
girls, with eight female assistants, but with no armed 
guards, barred windows, or severe punishments. The 
inmates of this institution are generally reformed 
(fully 80 per cent) so as to lead respectable lives. 

Of all European statesmen none have done them- 
selves such honor as the eloquent Gambetta, by the 
profundity of statesmanship, when he announced in 
a recent speech that "pure science must be supple- 
mented by moral teaching, which could be best imparted 
by women." He spoke of legislative reforms, " which 
would give women the influence and competence to 
refine and civilize citizens. " 

Dr. Uellner, one of the framers of the present sys- 
tem of German education, says: 

"It is quite impossible for men to teach the modern languages 
or the stories of history with anything like the success which 
women have. In the languages they do the work so beautifully, 
they hit upon the accent so precisely, and have such a faculty for 
imparting it to scholars, that it is a great misfortune that our 
customs forbid the employment of lady teachers for boys as well 
as girls. They show the same aptitude for imparting their knowl- 
edge in the middle history classes. They cannot be equalled in 
that delicate manner and feeling and beauty with which they tell 
the stories of history." 

The remarkable adaptation of woman to the devel- 
opment of the young and to the diffusion of a happy 
social influence, removes all those gloomy and morose 
influences which render the school-room an injury to 
the moral nature. No woman ever entertained such 



246 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

feelings in reference to education as were embodied 
in the gloomy confessions of Carlyle: "The despi- 
cable wretchedness of teaching can be known only to 
those who have tried it, and to Him who made the 
heart and knows it all. One meets with few spectacles 
more afflicting than that of a young man with a free 
spirit, with impetuous though honorable feelings, con- 
demned to waste the flower of his life in such a calling, 
to fade in it by slow and sure corrosion of discontent, 
and at last obscurely and unprofitably to leave with 
an indignant joy the miseries of a world which his 
talents might have illustrated and his virtues adorned. " 

The situation which goaded Carlyle to despair could 
have been occupied by many intellectual women with 
content and pleasure, because to them the vocation 
was natural. To men of the unsocial masculine na- 
ture of Carlyle, such a vocation was unnatural, be- 
cause they had not the womanly elements of character, 
and they would have been equally miserable and fret- 
ful if forced into other vocations of women, such as 
keeping house and rearing a family of children. There 
are so vast a number of men utterly unfit for the fem- 
inine duties of educating the young, as to make their 
replacement by female teachers a beneficent reform. 

Women are also needed to establish good manners. 
Potter Palmer has proved that they give satisfaction 
as hotel clerks, and I think every officer who has to 
attend to the demands of strangers should be a wo- 
man, until we find men who can compete with them 
in politeness. 

Is it not an impious desecration of the divine plan 
of humanity, that a being fitted for the highest ethical 
duties, the guardian of posterity, should be debased 
by our false civilization, driven to prostitution by 
poverty, and utterly wrecked by toil and privation, as 
so often occurs in the farm-work of England and Ger- 
many, and in their half-nude labor in the collieries of 
England, and the toils of the sewing-women in large 
cities? It is a minor barbarism also which makes a 
sexual distinction in the rewards of labor, and gives 
to female teachers in Massachusetts less than half the 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 2tf 

salary of males. There is a great disparity in all the 
New England States, but to the honor of New York, 
Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, Maryland, Tennessee, 
the Carolinas, and the States around the Gulf, they 
make little or no distinction in the compensation of 
male and female teachers. 

The elevation of humanity begins in the elevation 
of woman, and in its highest development her posi- 
tion will be queenly. Her social status, like the mer- 
cury of the barometer, indicates, by its elevation, the 
period of sunshine and tranquillity. 

The association of the two sexes is the divine order 
in all things. Their separation is morbid, unnatural 
and abortive, like breaking apart the right and left 
blades of a pair of scissors. Nature indicates the 
union of the different — sunshine and clouds are min- 
gled — sweet and acid juices in fruits, bread and butter, 
meat and salt, coffee and sugar are wholesome unions. 
So are the sexes united, and in education women 
should teach boys, and men teach girls. 

The Boston University took the right view in abol- 
ishing distinctions of sex, and speaking of collegiate 
institutions for males not as universities but as class 
institutions. The Universities of Leipsic and Zurich 
have taken the lead on the continent in the admission 
of women, and in the last twenty years a hundred and 
thirty American colleges and universities have adopted 
co-education. 

The question of woman's admission to colleges and 
co-education is now practically settled in America and 
in Europe, but it is some time after a principle is es- 
tablished and the truth is known before it is obeyed 
by all. Class institutions, exclusive male colleges, have 
proved generally so demoralizing heretofore, or at 
least so destitute of the proper moral influence, that 
I think parents when they understand the matter will 
be unwilling to send their sons to such institutions. 
Not that a male school is necessarily injurious to moral 
refinememt, but that it requires a rare skill and energy 
in moral education to prevent it from becoming such, 
and that not only academic institutions but medical 



248 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

colleges have been very greatly improved in their 
moral tone by the admission of female students, and 
even of female professors. Mrs. Horace Mann, in 
speaking of co-education, said that " Harvard College 
is not the place to try it in at present, for several rea- 
sons — the traditional prejudice, the want of proper 
arrangements, the very low moral character of the 
college community. "f 

It is one of the most pleasing recollections of forty 
years of life in which I have sacrificed my own ad- 
vancement, by supporting and introducing new truths 
in advance of the times, that the first application for 
admission of a female student to a medical college 
anywhere in the world, of which I have any knowledge, 
was made at my residence at Cincinnati, and that I 
immediately procured the assent of the faculty to the 
admission of female students. I have had the pleas- 
ure of giving diplomas to many female physicians, 
and at my last course of medical lectures in the Boston 
University, about thirty ladies were in attendance, 
while one of my colleagues as a medical professor was 
a lady who had honorably reared eleven children, and 
was at that time actively engaged in the duties of a 
large medical practice. I can safely say that all the 
women whom I have instructed in medicine have been 
a valuable acquisition to society. 

The fourth division of woman's employment is that 
of medical practice, and when we recollect the eminent 
women distinguished in medicine in Europe, it is sur- 
prising that there should be any division of opinion 
here on that subject. 

In the natural division of employments, war belongs 
to men — they excel in that because they have the 
physical force and animal courage. But the healing 
of the sick and wounded victims of war naturally be- 
longs to women, because they have the sympathy, love 
and patience that are necessary. So far from doubt- 
ing whether women should be allowed to heal the 
sick, I consider it as much their especial business as 
war is the business of men, and the only question in 
my mind is whether the treatment of the sick should 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 249 

not be the business of women exclusively. If men 
were entirely excluded from the medical profession to 
make room for women, I believe it would be far bet- 
ter than if women were excluded to leave it in the 
hands of men alone. But neither sex should be ex- 
cluded. Every city now has an increasing supply of 
female physicians, and I have no doubt that in time 
there will be as many females as males in the practice, 
and thus every good, intellectual woman will find an 
open road to a remunerative profession in which she 
may attain independence, fame, and, perhaps, wealth. 
We lose a vast deal by not utilizing our female talent. 
I know a family in which two of the brothers have be- 
come very successful as physicians, and I know that 
their unmarried sister would have been still more suc- 
cessful in *the profession, if the fashion of the times 
had not prevented her adopting it. 

But aside from all ideas of professional practice, 
every woman is ex officio a physician, and ought to 
have a medical education, whether young men do or 
not. She necessarily attends the sick, and in country 
places where the physician is seldom seen she is com- 
pelled to manage many cases, whether she will or not. 
Moreover, she has the entire hygienic and medical 
management of the young, who have no discretion to 
take care of themselves, and even if physicians are 
conveniently within reach, she has every case in full 
control when the cure is easy. Disease is never for- 
midable if you keep it at arm's length, but if you allow 
it to seize your vital organs before you do anything, 
you have a battle for life. Disease is like a pick- 
pocket — if you pay no attention to his approaches till 
your pocket-book is gone, it may be hard to recover 
it, but if you seize his hand before it reaches your 
pocket you are safe. The common course is to wait 
until the pickpocket has stolen your health, and call in 
the doctor to help you recover it. But if you insist 
on maintaining high health all the time, and resist the 
very first approaches of disease, you will never be a 
victim, and may live till you die of old age. Women 
are the sentinels especially over the young, and if they 



250 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

were educated to do their full duty in warding off dis- 
ease, there would be much less for the medical pro- 
fession. 

Women are so deplorably miseducated that they 
often think it highly respectable to be in delicate 
health, and no discredit at all to have their families 
continually broken down with disease. The plain, 
unquestionable truth is that health is the basis of all our 
usefulness, the basis, indeed, of every virtue, and that 
we are morally bound to maintain our health — we 
have no right to be sick when we are able to protect our- 
selves from the causes of disease. The fashionable 
education of women, until recently, was described by 
a lady, herself an eminent teacher, as follows: " From 
a petted plaything, woman early blossoms into an in- 
mature life, without aim or object, beyond "entertain- 
ment and adornment. She is never taught the 
simplest detail of business by her father or brother, 
which might give her practical common sense. And 
as she knows nothing of the outside world, except 
what is brought to her doors, her views of life are nar- 
rowed to a very small round of petty cares." 

Of the ten thousand who began life when I did, 
sixty-seven years ago, more than nine thousand are no 
longer living, and I look around mournfully for the 
friends of other days — the colleagues, the eminent 
men and lovely women who ought to be in the merid- 
ian of their usefulness now, but whose lives are trans- 
ferred to another world, leaving behind the recol- 
lection of hopes unrealized, schemes and duties in 
progress — lives abruptly ended like an unfinished mon- 
ument — two thirds before the age of twenty-five — 
scarcely one in twenty reaching seventy. 

Modern civilization at the beginning of this century 
had greatly increased human longevity, which in 1590 
averaged, at Geneva, 22-^ years. But under our false 
education, this increased longevity has greatly de- 
clined, and nothing but physiological and industrial 
education can arrest our degeneracy. 

Every college — every school of every grade — should 
be a school of hygiene, where youth should be trained 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 25 1 

into perfect health as horses are trained for a race or 
musicians trained to sing, and trained in all the art 
and science of living long and living well — living to rear 
their grandchildren to maturity — living to see the 
world progressing with increasing speed to a happier 
and nobler life — living to realize that they have them- 
selves done something to make the world better for 
their having lived in it — living until they cannot only 
realize that they are nearer to heaven themselves, but 
that heaven is nearer to the world, because the world 
is living on a higher moral plane to which the colleges 
— the colleges in which men and women unite — are 
elevating society. 

In this grand elevating process, woman is the more 
important power. Man is more efficient for progress, 
but woman for elevation; man may lay a broader 
scientific basis, but woman will build higher up to- 
ward heaven. The world has just reached the stage 
of civilization in which woman can show her elevating 
power in medical science, in education and in religion. 
Woman's power being chiefly moral and intuitional, 
while man's is chiefly physical and intellectual, it fol- 
lows that in proportion as society attains a higher 
condition, woman's powers are more appreciated and 
more influential. In barbarism, woman is a beast of 
burden, but in the highest civilization (which is not 
yet attained) she is the social queen. 

Paris has been the most brilliant focus of European 
civilization, and in 1795 Napoleon wrote to his brother 
Joseph, " A woman has need of six months of Paris to 
know what is due to her, and what her empire really is." 

Society is to be elevated by the omnipotent power 
of moral education, of which woman may be the prin- 
cipal channel. It is useless to talk about the equality 
of the sexes, for they are not and never will be equal. 
Man is the superior of woman in force and in science, 
but woman is the superior of man in that without 
which force and science are as utterly worthless as the 
rocks of a desert — the moral nature which bestows 
happiness here and leads to infinitely higher happiness 
hereafter. 



252 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

The central faculty of the moral nature is love, and 
that is the supreme word*of woman's life. It is pleas- 
ing to observe even in Russian royalty a recognition 
of this truth. The late Czarina, several years before 
her death, was inspecting the Smolnoje Institute for 
girls, which was under the control of Madame Leontieff, 
a dame of the old orthodox style. 

11 During the examination of the pupils, the Empress, singling out 
one of the elder girls, asked her, " What is love?" to which unex- 
pected question the young lady, blushing deeply, returned no 
answer. Madame Leontieff stepped forward, made a profound 
obeisance to the Empress, and craved permission to inform her 
Majesty ' that in her school no instruction was imparted to the 
pupils on this particular subject, and that, in all probability, the 
girl did not even understand the meaning of the word her Majesty 
had deigned to pronounce.' 'That is much to be regretted,' 
replied the Empress; ' for woman's life is naught but love — first 
of all, love for her parents, then love for her husband, and lastly, 
love for her children. If these girls have acquired no just com- 
prehension of love, they have been very badly prepared for the 
duties of life.' The Empress left the institute in manifest dis- 
pleasure, and a few days later Madame Leontieff received her dis- 
missal." 

The people's colleges of the future will be devoted to 
this work of education, developing the physical, intel- 
lectual, and moral nature of man; recognizing the 
supremacy of the moral nature; placing virtue first, 
health and physical power next, industrial ability third, and 
intellectual culture fourth. 

Virtue is but the firm and heroic expression of 
love. 

Love is the simple concrete expression of all religion 
and all ethics. 

What is the ultimate aim and result of love ? It is 
to elevate the human race. 

What is the ultimate aim and result of true educa- 
tion ? To elevate the human race. Therefore, they 
are identical in purpose, as the bow and the arrow, or 
the hand and the pen. Love is the bow, education the 
arrow. Love is the hand, education the pen. With- 
out the living power of love, education is as dead and 
worthless as the arrow and pen alone would be. 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 253 

But we must recollect that love works in two 
methods — first by original development; second by 
culture. Which of the two is more important ? Cer- 
tainly it is development. If we plant a worthless tree, 
no culture or pruning can bring valuable fruit. De- 
velopment and culture both belong to woman, but 
she has not been taught nor even permitted to control 
either. 

Now I would claim for her — and, if I could, would 
enforce the claim with all the fiery earnestness of 
Demosthenes — that she shall be educated to control both 
— that the leading study in all her education, to which 
all other things should be tributary, should be the laws 
of reproduction — the science of life in all its ramifica- 
tions of health and disease, happiness and misery, 
virtue and vice — but above all the science of the end- 
less life of the human race on earth. 

Rightfully she should study profoundly, in all the 
light of philosophic religion, the salvation of her own 
soul — the development of that eternal life which has 
its fruition in the mansions not built with mortal 
hands — but she cannot rightfully attend to that form 
of eternal life and secure eternal bliss without attend- 
ing also and equally to that other form of eternal life 
which is realized on earth — for she is identified with 
both. 

The beautiful young mother who appears before you 
to-day is mistress of tw 7 o eternities — spiritual and 
maternal. When her beautiful form has mouldered 
into earth the two eternities begin — the eternity of the 
spirit which has passed from her temporary body to 
the high companionship of angels, and from that high 
realm looks down on the lasting if not everlasting suc- 
cession of human forms springing from her own person 
and reproducing her own features and sentiments 
through all time. 

With that eternal procession she is identified, for it 
is a part of her own being — a part for which she is 
responsible — the glory or the shame of which, the hap- 
piness or misery of which, is hers forever, and there- 
fore she has a right — a right higher than artificial 



254 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

governments and laws — a divine right to control these 
two eternal currents of destiny into which her own 
life expands. 

And it is impossible for her to perform rightly her 
duty to her own eternal soul-life in heaven, except in 
performing her duty in that procession of life on earth 
— a duty which is paramount to all other duties, and 
which every mother feels in her deep devotion to her 
child. To that child she is willing to sacrifice her life, 
and rightly too, for her own life is but a single stream, 
but the life on earth from her expands into a thousand 
streams and ever-flowing fountains. 

Therefore, it is unquestionable that woman should 
be the sole arbiter of maternity, and all laws which 
render her in this subordinate to the will of another, 
either by physical force or any other form of compul- 
sion, are cruel and debasing tyranny — debasing to her 
and to the human race. The sentiment which teaches 
that woman is simply a breeding animal for the 
pleasure of her owner is devilish in its origin and 
devilish in its debasing influences on society, for next 
to intemperance it has been the chief source of a de- 
moralized and criminal population, and the fetter that 
leads her to this degrading position has been financial 
dependence, or, in other words, the lack of industrial 
independence and self-supporting ability. 

The mightiest cause of human degradation, greater 
even than alcohol, is to be found in our false education, 
customs and laws on this subject. 

Society and governments proceed as if there was but 
one danger to be dreaded — the fear that the human 
race would die out for want of propagative power — 
whereas it is notorious that the propagative power of 
all animal life is superabundant in man as well as 
animals, and if it had not been for war, famine, and pes- 
tilence, the human race might have filled a hundred 
such worlds as this if they had been accessible. 

This terribly grand reproductive power conserved 
by law would soon fill all continents and compel the 
universal destruction of infants as the only mode of 
avoiding famine. The curse of society has been the 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 2$$ 

reproductive power of evil — the reproductive power of 
crime, animalism, and pauperism. Our social system 
breeds a mighty army of paupers which in some coun- 
tries has amounted to onetenth of the entire popula- 
tion, and decrees that pauperism shall be propagated. 
It breeds a mighty army of criminals whose propaga- 
tion is encouraged. It breeds a mighty army of 
drunkards and gives them a tyrannic power over help- 
less women to propagate their detestable vice faster 
than the hand of death can remove its victims. 

It puts a premium on imbecility, disease, and phys- 
ical inferiority by exempting them from the expos- 
ures of war, and selects for carnage the ablest and 
bravest men — for parentage the most wretched. 

And as if all these methods of degradation were in- 
sufficient, medical science actually assists the deterio- 
ration by prolonging thousands of wretched lives to 
aid in the transmission of hereditary disease and in- 
feriority through marriage, for which they are unfit. 

All this is wrong as wrong can be, and we need a 
social movement against this race degeneracy by prop- 
agation of evil as much as against the degeneracy by 
alcohol, gambling, and war. We need to discourage 
instead of encouraging marriage. We should surround 
it with every legitimate barrier. We should require 
as a prerequisite to every marriage sufficient evidence 
of good habits and of ability to maintain a family 
without increasing pauperism and crime. We should 
also require, at least in the woman, a thorough knowl- 
edge of the physiological and hygienic principles in- 
volved in parentage and the care of the young. No 
matter how many may be excluded by these precau- 
tions, the more the better. The production of chil- 
dren should never be encouraged except in those who 
earnestly desire to have children, and whose affection 
can be trusted to do their duty fully to their offspring. 
Some of the Northwestern Indians are wiser than the 
white men — they require the suitor for marriage to 
have a good temper and good character, to own a 
dozen horses, to be able to support the girl and her 
family too, if necessary, and to give his mother-in-law 



2$6 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

a dowry. Before he gets a handsome wife he has to 
give a gun and two horses, besides blankets, cloths, 
and provisions. 

Marriage being thus restricted, and woman being 
fully educated in her duties and rights, she would not 
tolerate parentage from any man stained by intemper- 
ance, crime, or any other debasing characteristic. To 
enable her to perform this duty of protecting posterity 
she should be enabled by law to obtain a speedy relief 
by divorce from any one unworthy of the sacred posi- 
tion of husband and father. 

I know there is a morbid puritanic sentiment which 
is hostile to divorce: every bigoted and dictatorial 
sciolist in morals bewails divorce as a moral calamity 
instead of bewailing the wickedness which made di- 
vorce a necessity. As well might he mourn over the 
surgeon's knife which amputates a mangled limb, in- 
stead of condemning the brutal violence of the mob 
in which the limb was mangled. Divorce is conserv- 
ative and not destructive. Instead of regretting the 
number of divorces, I regret the reluctance of women 
to seek divorce when justice demands it, as I know 
that thousands wrong themselves by their submission 
to moral and physical evil. And I regret still more 
the miseducation of both sexes and the helpless igno- 
rance of young women which renders marriage a mat- 
ter of blind impulse and often of life-long sorrow. 
Every divorce is a blessing to posterity by checking 
the increase of discord, malice, and crime. I have 
been informed of a case in which a woman had a hus- 
band who meanly withheld from her the means to 
purchase absolute necessaries, even the clothing for 
her babe, and who, instead of escaping from his tyr- 
anny, submitted to the imposition and procured the 
necessary money by stealing it from him. Her taking 
it was a right, but it was in the method of stealing, 
and that maternal stealing made her child permanent- 
ly a thief. In many such ways is crime fostered by 
hindering divorce. 

Therefore I say encourage and facilitate just di- 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 2^ 

vorce and discourage all production of unloved, un- 
desired and contaminated children. The man and the 
woman who adhere to celibacy from indifference to 
offspring or from consciousness of their own defects 
have performed well their parts and negatively done 
something to diminish the sum of human evil — that 
mighty social evil which consists in overwhelming the 
good and true beneath the flood of selfishness, disease, 
worthlessness, animalism, and crime. 

The world's welfare demands that woman should 
be educated to resist evil and to protect herself from 
the debased classes. First, she should have the indus- 
trial education to make her independent and strong in 
herself to resist. Secondly, she should have the broad- 
est and deepest psycho-physiological education to 
qualify her for her grand position as the mistress of 
two eternities in heaven and earth. 

But before this can be done we need an immense 
purification of the moral atmosphere. We need that 
enlightened purification of soul which is obtained by 
the experience of maternity, which is obtained by the 
study of the healing art in the temple of anatomy — ■ 
which is obtained in the studies of the highest art — 
that purity which is found in the experienced mother, 
the faithful physician, the inspired artist, and which is 
found in the highest perfection in the angels of the 
higher heavens, who know nothing of impurity, should 
be diffused in the public mind by religious, artistic, 
and anatomical education, until the highest functions 
of life, which link mortal clay with divine wisdom, 
may be studied by all as the chart of our voyage from 
social degradation to the heavenly life on earth. 

It is for this true fulfilment of her proper destiny 
that woman should be educated. Justice demands it, 
common sense demands it, the spirit of liberty de- 
mands it, science, philosophy, and true religion de- 
mand it — the voice of Him who died on Calvary still 
demands it, still demands that love shall rule the 
earth and children shall be reared for heaven. 

But sceptical pessimism interferes, and, the wish be- 



258 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OE WOMAN. 

ing father to the thought, declares there is no practi- 
cable way for woman to reach a better and essentially 
different condition. 

The ability of woman to take a prominent part in 
intellectual labors and college life has been questioned 
by Dr. Clarke, in his highly sensational book, entitled 
" Sex in Education," which suggests that the consti- 
tutional infirmities of women are so great that their 
health is undermined in colleges to an extent that 
should occasion " great alarm" to the human race, 
and that before women can safely attain collegiate 
educations it will be necessary to make enormous 
changes in our college system, such as would proba- 
bly cost Harvard College two millions of dollars to fit 
it for teaching women without destroying their health. 
This he says in conformity to that pessimism which has 
been so long the bane of the unreformed medical pro- 
fession, and in utter defiance of the fact that women 
are successfully carrying on their studies in company 
with men not only in medical colleges, where the- 
hardest study is enforced for ten hours daily, and 
where the incessant application and confinement often 
impair the health of students, but in our finest uni- 
versities and colleges, in Boston University, Cornell 
University, Michigan University, Lombard University, 
Oberlin and Antioch Colleges, and Eminence Col- 
lege,* from which we have reports, and many others 
of which I have not the statistics. From all these 
institutions the testimony is entirely unanimous that 
the co-education of the sexes has not only been of 



* As an illustration of the practicability of making colleges for 
women hygienic, I would mention that at Eminence College it 
has been common to observe a very marked improvement in the 
health of the female pupils. A physician of eminence who brought 
his daughter to this school thought it would be doubtful whether 
she could continue her studies, as she was in bad health, and had 
been on that account withdrawn from other schools. He required 
the privilege of withdrawing at any time without further charge 
if her health required, but after engaging in the cheerful studies 
and exercises of the college for three months her health was 
permanently restored, and her weight increased twenty-five pounds. 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 259 

great moral benefit, but has been beneficial in refer- 
ence to scholarship and all the objects of a college. 

In all these colleges and universities engaged in 
the co-education of the sexes there is no authentic 
account of a common failure of health in female 
students. On the contrary, the statistics, so far as 
reported, show that the attendance and scholarship 
of the young women equal those of the young men, 
and that their health also is equal, both in college 
and in after life. 

In these colleges and universities there are no spe- 
cial and peculiar arrangements to enable women to 
have an easier time than men, for no such arrange- 
ments have been needed or desired. The statement 
of Dr. Clarke, that suspensions of study for female 
students on account of their peculiar infirmity are 
common in European schools, is contradicted by the 
explicit testimony of gentlemen from England, France 
and Germany. 

What does American experience prove ? Oberlin 
College has been in operation over forty years. We 
have reports of its graduation of 579 men and 620 wo- 
men. It was ascertained in 1873 tnat the mortality of 
the male graduates had been 10 per cent of their 
whole number, and that of the female graduates but 
9 2-3 per cent. At Antioch College the mortality of 
the female graduates had been 9 3-7 per cent, while 
that of the male graduates had been 13 1-2 per cent. 
These mortalities are exclusive of anything belonging 
to the war. The Rev. Olympia Brown, who spent 
four years at Antioch, says: " All the time I was at 
Antioch College I never heard of a young lady in the 
college requiring a physician's advice. If you should 
take the whole number of women in this country who 
have graduated from a regular college with men, and 
place them side by side with the same number of wo- 
men who have not had that course of study, select 
them where you will, the college graduates will be 
stronger in mind and bod}r, able to endure more and 
work harder than the others." 

The reports from Vassar College for women show 



26o SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

that, instead of breaking down under study, the gen- 
eral health of their graduates" in 1871, '72 and '73 was 
better on leaving the college than on entering. Mrs. 
Caroline H. Dall, of Boston, says that " at a meeting of 
the American Association for the Promotion of Social 
Science I drew attention to the superior health of the 
girls of Vassar. I pointed out the fact that the health 
of the girls continued to improve to the hour of gradu- 
ation. The world maybe challenged to produce in any 
one neighborhood 400 young women of so great phys- 
ical promise. " Miss Carpenter, of England, after a 
visit to Vassar, said: " We must admit that they have 
superior health." 

Mount Holyoke Female Seminary has had, during 
thirty years, 12 13 graduates, with 126 deaths, or 10.39 
per cent. Let us compare this with the mortality of 
seven New York colleges for males: Harvard, Yale, 
Antioch, Williams, Bowdoin, Brown, and Dartmouth, 
in the same length of time, had 11,246 graduates, and 
429 deaths, or 12.7 per cent. The female mortality 
seems to have been not quite 82 per cent of the male 
mortality. 

The entire mortality of the graduates is remarkably 
small, which coincides with the fact that the health 
and longevity of the educated class generally are 
known to be superior to the average health and lon- 
gevity of the entire community. 

President Seelye, of the Smith College (Northamp- 
ton, Mass.), said in his inaugural address (1875): "I 
bear witness from a personal observation of two years 
at Amherst that the health of the students as a rule 
improved from freshman to senior year. Again and 
again have I seen puny, weak freshmen toned up by 
Dr. Hitchcock's judicious training so that they gradu- 
ated strong, well-formed men, and the first scholars in 
their class also. There is no reason why a similar 
improvement may not take place among young 
ladies." 

Experience shows that this improvement does take 
place in young ladies perhaps even to a greater ex- 
tent than among young gentlemen. And as the sta- 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 26l 

tistics are certainly rather more favorable to female 
students, we need not be alarmed at the diffusion of 
collegiate education for women, but we may well be 
alarmed at the vast number of half-educated women 
who lose their health because they know so little about 
preserving it. 

When Dr. Clarke announced that it would probably 
cost two millions of dollars for Harvard University to 
adjust itself for teaching women on his plan without 
killing them, he did not intend to burlesque his own 
theory by this fantastic statement. His zeal in de- 
fending the course of Harvard College and sundry 
medical colleges opposed to co-education greatly out- 
ran his discretion, and hence his book reads much 
more like the sensational book of a novelist than the 
sober truths of physiology and experience. Its state- 
ments are contrary to all college experience in this 
country, and seem to have been prompted by that philo- 
sophic pessimism which regards education not as a 
normal process of general improvement, but as an ex- 
hausting process dangerous to health and life. 

These gloomy views have been very beneficial in 
bringing out a full demonstration of woman's capaci- 
ties in education. 

Under the light now shed on this subject there can 
be no excuse for closing the doors of any educational 
institution against women, where it is thought desir- 
able to maintain gentlemanly habits and moral in- 
fluences. The carving of benches with pocket-knives, 
covering the floor with pools of tobacco spit, and the 
walls with coarse obscenity, the coarse language, noise, 
turbulence and tumultuous rushing at the door, which 
often distinguish medical colleges, show how much 
they all need the presence of women. 

The overflow of animal spirits and vivacious impulse 
in girls takes a different direction from that of boys — 
instead of hazing a new arrival, they overwhelm her 
with kind attentions. At a Presbyterian Female Col- 
lege in Ottawa, Canada, the young lady students 
learned that a poor woman who supported herself and 
children by washing was laid up by sickness, and went 



262 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

to her house the next morning, did the washing and 
ironing for her, and sent the clothes home. 

It is very true that some female constitutions have 
infirmities unfavorable to hard study, but it is equally 
true that male constitutions have faults also that are 
still more unfavorable to hard study. The predomi- 
nant animality or animal force of the male brain is a 
condition more unfavorable to study than any pecul- 
iarity of the female constitution. The great difficulty 
of teachers in primary schools is to subdue this rest- 
less animality so as to give the moral and intellectual 
faculties fair play, and inspire an interest in intellectual 
pursuits instead of mischief and sport, without too 
much severity and confinement. This is the major 
hindrance in education, and all teachers will agree that 
there is less of this among females. Hence, if educa- 
tion is simply hard intellectual labor, women are as 
favorably equipped by nature as men. Mrs. Prof. 
Jackson, of Boston University, said: " Does not every 
teacher of boys and girls know that girls, as a rule, 
take less time to commit their tasks than boys ?" 

Prof. Orton, of Vassar College, said in his address to 
the National Educational Association, 1874: 



"It has been doubted whether a true collegiate standard could be 
maintained in a woman's college. It has been done at Vassar for 
eight years; and the faculty have yet to receive a petition for a 
lower standard. The average student does not exhibit any peculiar 
weakness before the highest problems or the deepest lectures. She 
masters trigonometry quite as readily as young men; she deter- 
mines an eclipse, not in a girl's way nor in a boy's way, but in the 
right way; and she has a special aptitude for the languages, such 
as in a Yale student would be called a marked linguistic talent. 
(Our German teacher, who has taught in Germany, England, France, 
and Switzerland, declares she has nowhere found students to grasp 
so readily and eagerly the literature of the language as at Vassar.) 
In the class-room girls are superior to boys of the same age. They 
are eminently docile and respectful, earnest and enthusiastic. 
Their diligence, clearness, and positivity, their minute accuracy 
and conscientiousness, are beyond all praise. Very few of our 
students attempt to recite what they do not know — a frequent farce 
in masculine colleges. Their receptive faculties are wonderful. I 
have never seen students in any college who could imbibe such a 
quantity of learning." 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 26$ 

The Nation, speaking of an examination at Vassar, 
said, " The superiority to young men was very percep- 
tible." The New York City Superintendent of Edu- 
cation says in his report for 1881, -that the female 
grammar-schools show from two to six per cent better 
average in all branches than the male. 

Such testimony does not show that there is no 
difference between the aptitudes of men and women, 
but does show that women are entirely competent to 
conquer any difficulties and attain whatever may be 
deemed the best education. It is not at Vassar Col- 
lege only, but everywhere that co-education has been 
tried, that we have evidence of the equal capacity of 
young women in all studies.* 

Dr. Palmer, of the University of Michigan, said, 
"The women in the classes in the University of Mich- 
igan were fully equal in ability and capability of re- 
ceiving instruction to young men." Prof. Olney made 
a similar statement. 

President Read, of the Missouri University, said that 
"in the system of prizes and honors these young 
women have carried off more than fifty per cent above 
their proper share. A woman student bore off the 
highest honor in the graduating class of this year" 

(1874). 

Prof. Proctor and Mr. Galton speak very highly of 
woman's aid in science in consequence of her exact 
memory of details and minute observation. 

The attempt was once made in the examinations of 
the London University to act upon the theory of a 
serious difference in the sexes. But the women de- 
sired no difference, and the examiners finally found it 
best to give up the theory. 

Harvard University, which instead of co-education 
has cautiously ventured to educate woman by an An- 

* Prof. J. P. Postgate, of Cambridge and London Universities, 
says (April 9, 1882): "Our Council are completely satisfied with 
the results of opening the classes to women. Both at Cambridge 
and at University College the women not infrequently beat the 
men in the lists." At that time, he said, there were about 150 
women studying at Cambridge. 



264 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

nex, is gratified in the results. Dr. Peabody, the 
Harvard Professor of Ethics, says: 

"There is, I think, on the part of our academic Faculty, entire 
satisfaction with the working of our system for the education of 
women. The young women who have been students are, I am 
inclined to think, without an exception earnestly engaged in their 
work, capable, and some of them exceptionally apt and able scholars, 
and seeking connection with the university for no other purpose 
than the enjoyment of superior educational privileges. Their 
teachers are in the highest degree satisfied and gratified with the 
year's work. The experiment has — I am surprised that I am able 
to say so — no results that can be quoted for or against the co-edu- 
cation of young men and young women. There has been hardly 
more connection between the college and the 'Annex,' so called, 
than if they had been a hundred miles apart. The apartments 
occupied for the young ladies' classes are at some little distance 
from the college, and the young ladies have been altogether ab- 
sorbed in their work, and so little disposed to court or invite notice 
from the outside world that their presence in Cambridge has hardly 
been recognized, except in their boarding-houses and by their 
teachers." 

To quote further testimony would be superfluous. 
What we have already considered must gladden the 
heart of every philanthropist, by displaying the vast 
resources of intellectual power which have remained 
under the conservative system undeveloped. 

For uncounted centuries the intellectual inferiority 
of women has been conceded and has been the basis 
not only of cynical jests, but of unfriendly legislation 
and exclusive masculine privileges and advantages in 
the struggle for subsistence. 

In view of the results of a fair trial, we have a duty 
to perform — for no one can controvert the position of 
President White, of Cornell University, that "it is a 
duty of society to itself — a duty which it cannot throw 
off — to see that the stock of talent and genius in each gener- 
ation have chance for development, that it may be added to 
the world's stock and aid in the world's work." 

In addition to all the considerations of political 
economy, as to industrial progress and national eleva- 
tion, we need the intellectuality of women to elevate 
the tone of society. Society is the summer sun for 
the development of intellect, but it develops weeds as 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN 265 

well as flowers. Heretofore men acquired a disgust 
for intellectual pursuits in their perverting education, 
and women were left ignorant of all great themes; 
hence society throughout the civilized world has been 
marked by frivolity, shallowness, gossip, and what a 
man of intellectual life would call refined vulgarity — 
what a Christian would call its selfish worldliness. 

In vain does education or native worth raise a few 
to a higher life. Whether men or women, they feel 
that they are by their tastes and sentiments isolated 
from the crowd. Or if with a strong heroic will and 
sense of duty they desire to elevate society, they are 
made to feel as Pestalozzi felt — as "a coal of fire lying 
in wet straw." 

The total revolution in society when women and 
men are alike thoroughly educated will render society 
itself a continual educational power, in which the 
progress of the true university will be prolonged 
through life. In conversational discussion and fire- 
side enlightenment, women will often lead toward 
higher themes by their superior delicacy of moral sen- 
timent, and the equality of intelligence will not only 
promote a greater sympathy and love in the home 
circle, but lay a better foundation for harmony in the 
sincere respect felt by a husband for the intelligence 
of his wife, and her ability to make his fireside more 
interesting than the club or any other masculine re- 
sort. 

The Clarke theory which is brought forward to 
impede this consummation is fundamentally false; not 
only as to the assertion of female inferiority, but in its 
grossly animal views of psychology — in asserting that 
sexual difference is due exclusively to the sexual or- 
gans — that no difference exists between the boy and 
girl before sexual pubescence, nor between the old 
woman entirely past the child-bearing age and the old 
man — assertions so contrary to the knowledge of every 
woman as to need no refutation. 

The great practical fallacy of the Clarke doctrine 
as to education lies in the assumption that education 
is necessarily a fatiguing, exhausting process which 



266 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

requires a strong constitution to endure it — a doctrine 
which could be maintained only from a college in 
which the fundamental principles of education were 
not understood. 

All proper normal education is beneficial and in- 
vigorating to both mind and body; nothing in an- 
thropology is more certain than this. It is only an 
abnormal system which cultivates the intellect alone, 
and thereby destroys the normal balance of life — 
which, in addition, by adhering to old and barbarous 
methods distorts and fatigues the intellect instead of 
giving it a healthful development — of which we can say 
that it is a tax upon the constitution requiring robust 
health to endure it, while true education improves the 
health, or, as Prof. Orton, of Vassar, says, " hard study 
is a tonic" when rightly directed. 

The whole of the terrific evil against which Dr. 
Clarke demands two millions of dollars to protect one 
university exists only in imagination or in a false sys- 
tem of education, and a college which cannot educate 
the mind without impairing health ought to forfeit its 
charter and terminate its existence. 

If there are women in the more effeminate, indolent 
and dissipated classes of society who have inherited 
feeble constitutions, so much the greater necessity that 
they should be sent to a true college, where their 
minds and bodies could be developed healthily to- 
gether. Granting all of Dr. Clarke's assertions as to 
female infirmities, and doubling their amount, it would 
only show the greater necessity for a true education 
of body and mind, and the necessity that colleges 
which destroy health should be revolutionized or de- 
stroyed themselves. The assertion that Harvard 
University cannot teach women with its present ar- 
rangements without destroying their health, coming* 
from a medical professor of Harvard, amounts to a 
fatal confession of incapacity and misconception of the 
philosophy of education and hygiene equally discredit- 
able to both the medical and the literapy departments, 
and shows that great universities may be to-day, as 
they were two hundred years ago, the strongholds of 



i 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 267 

antiquated errors and fortifications against the prog- 
ress of enlightenment. 

But conservatism has lost the battle, and the over- 
whelming majority by which Cambridge University 
decided to admit women to university education, and 
to adopt Girton and Newnham female colleges into 
the university system, may be considered the end of 
the battle * 

President Angell, of Michigan University, says in the 
report for 1879: 

"We have become so accustomed to see women take up any- 
kind of university work, carry it on successfully, and graduate in 
good health, that many of the theoretical discussions of co-education 
by those who have not had opportunities to examine it carefully, 
read strangely to us here on the ground. It is a cause of sincere 
congratulation that, both in this country and in Europe, the oppor- 
tunities for women to obtain as thorough and extended an educa- 
tion as men are rapidly multiplying." 

The painful and laborious theory of education is no 
greater error than the monastic theory of isolation to 
prevent social profligacy and rash marriages. 

Universal association of the sexes is the order of 
nature. Isolation is unnatural and evil. It aggravates 
the faults of each sex, rendering men more coarse, 
violent and sensual, women more timid, imaginative 
and childish, and more apt to yield to fanciful and 
absurd attachments, or to the arts of the seducer, while 
men become more passionately impulsive and ready 
to form alliances which judgment does not approve. 

Isolation is the system that encourages profligacy 
and endangers the happiness of both by rash alliances. 
Familiar daily association removes all the glittering 
illusions of imagination in either sex, and at the same 
time subdues the sensual impulses which are fostered 
by solitary fancy. The intercourse of intelligence, 
politeness and respect, especially the respect elicited 

* England had in 1879 eleven colleges for women, including the 
School of Medicine in London, and over a hundred high-schools for 
girls. London University makes no distinction between males and 
females, and at the examination for matriculation July, 1879, tne 
number of female candidates was 868. 



268 SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 

by superior intellect, elevates the sentiments above the 
plane of animality, while it furnishes that just appre- 
ciation which is the proper basis of friendship and 
love. Experience in co-education confirms these views. 
"The young ladies of mixed institutions," said Prof. 
Hosmer, of the Missouri University " are delicate, sen- 
sible, modest as a class, their womanliness in no way 
touched except to be confirmed; young men, on the 
other hand, are brave and vigorous, in no way emas- 
culated." 

Jean Paul says: "To insure modesty I would advise 
the education of the sexes together; for two boys will 
preserve twelve girls, or two girls twelve boys, inno- 
cent amidst winks, jokes and improprieties, merely 
by that instinctive sense which is the forerunner of 
natural modesty. . But I will guarantee nothing in a 
school where* girls are alone together, and still less 
where boys are." 

It would not be a delicate or pleasant subject to 
rehearse the many stories that are told of schools ex- 
clusively male or exclusively female. 

Even the necessary separation of the sexes in our 
present mode of life is the source of great evils in 
mutual ignorance and rash alliances fatal to domestic 
happiness and destructive of that love without which 
no virtuous family can be reared. 

President Warren, of the Boston University, rightly 
spoke of the disjointed system which separates the 
sexes as the enemy of home and foe of civilization. 

The world is full of blighted homes and homes in 
which the high happiness of love is unknown. 

To prevent their increase we need higher education 
and industrial education for woman, that she may feel 
strong in her independence and shun every unhallowed 
union. 

Maidenhood dignified by intelligence and efficiency 
should be more honored than it has been. Works of 
philanthropy are ever in need of laborers, and they 
may be most readily found in the ranks of maiden 
women whose zeal and kindness in the care of the sick 
and young are among the richest possessions of society. 



SPHERE AND EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 269 

Whether as maiden, wife or mother, woman needs the 
highest education possible in the limited time of her 
minority, and when she receives this justice from soci- 
ety, she will help society onward to a true civilization. 

This higher culture of woman is a great social 
necessity. There is no real progress for humanity 
which does not take its rise in the moral influence of 
the family, and that moral influence consists essentially 
of love. But the basis of love is respect, and even 
where great love does not exist, mutual respect is the 
source of the concord and peace which make a blessed 
home. But respect must be elicited by actual worth, 
and the cultivated intelligence, the nobler deportment 
of a woman rightly educated, competent to guide every- 
thing in her sphere, will command and retain that 
respect from her husband and children which is the 
basis not only of courtesy but of love. 

From mothers thus respected and cherished, com- 
petent to form the minds and manners of their children, 
a nobler future may be expected. 

A school of females is a nursery of all the virtues 
for humanity. Under the elevating influence of song 
its moral atmosphere becomes heavenly. There is no 
difficulty in attaining the pitch of virtuous sentiment 
required. It is even possible to go beyond the normal 
limits in cultivating the tender and disinterested sen- 
timents to the sacrifice of the animal passions and 
forces that sustain physical life until the appetites 
demand too little food, and the muscles are too quies- 
cent for a healthy vigorous constitution. 

It is necessary that energetic physical culture should 
be maintained by the various forms of industry and by 
out-door sports and exercises to develop the physical 
basis for the nobler sentiments, for a broad foundation 
is necessary to a noble superstructure. The tendency 
to anaemic nervousness and hysteric excitability should 
be entirely destroyed in education by the development 
of rich, abundant blood, strong muscle, and power of 
endurance. A proper full-orbed education develops 
alike soul and body — intellectual power, practical 
capacity, physical endurance, longevity, cheerfulness, 
and exalted virtue. 



CHAPTER X. 
MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 

Power of moral education to establish universal peace, in which 
religions have thus far failed. — War the result of education and 
habits of thought. — Does Christ or Moloch control our civiliza- 
tion ? — Military force and military sentiment of France. — Amer- 
ica a refuge for the European race. — Satanic life of the soldier. 
— Von Moltke's glorification of war. — Continual imminence of 
war in Europe. — German, French and Russian militarism. — 
Ruinous injury and cost of war in America and Europe. — Italian 
war and poverty. — War and famine in India. — Military passion 
of political rulers. — Religion must repress national brigandage. 
— Horrible incongruity of Christianity and war. — Possibility of 
universal peace. — Education to be changed and the splendor of 
war abolished. — Moral education will harmonize nations. — 
Moral education may exorcise the spirit of war as cannibals 
have been civilized and the wildest savages reformed into good 
citizens. — Great power of Kindergartens. — True religion, the 
source of universal peace, worth more than all mechanical dis- 
coveries and financial wisdom. 

The great and final triumph of moral education will 
be in the establishment of peace on earth and good- 
will among men. 

All religions have failed to do this — either because 
they have not sufficiently condemned war (or, like Ma- 
homet, they made war) or because their inculcations 
were too high and pure to be incarnated in any church. 
It is painful to reflect how completely the followers of 
Christ have renounced his principles to indentify them- 
selves with war. 

I would not say a word to depreciate the value of 
that religious inspiration which has been a potent in- 
fluence for civilization and humanity in Europe, but I 
must insist that thirty years of true moral education would 
do more for humanity than nineteen centuries of relig- 
ious propaganda, aided by colleges, schools and lit- 
erature, have already done. 



MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 27 1 

I am sure that neither war, nor poverty, nor pesti- 
lence, nor crime is a part of the eternal order of society, 
but that these evils belong to the childhood and in- 
fancy of the race. A true philosopher with arbitrary 
power for twenty years might abolish all these evils 
wherever that power extended. Pestilence should be 
abolished by hygienic science and education, poverty 
by industrial education and science, war and crime by 
moral education. 

Crime and war are not ineradicable, for they do not 
always depend on a criminal organization or malig- 
nant passions in the criminal, but rather upon false 
sentiments and delusions originating in ignorance, 
barbarism and ferocity, but transmitted to succeeding 
generations in accordance with the law of perpetuity 
of physical and moral forces. The automatic or un- 
conscious elements of human nature perpetuate every 
mode of action or thought once established, and dom- 
inate over all individual peculiarities by the entire 
force of society. The men who burned witches, and 
who tortured prisoners in the dungeons of the Inquisi- 
tion, were not essentiallv different from their more 
humane successors, but were dominated by falsehoods 
which controlled their humanity; and the men who 
engaged in human sacrifice in Mexican temples be- 
longed to a peaceful and amiable race. 

The blind element of automatic action called instinct 
or habit is powerful in inverse proportion to the intel- 
lect, and hence dominates over animals so far as to 
leave but a limited educability. The blind element 
maintains the old, the luminous intellectual element 
introduces the new. The latter ever proposes changes 
and improvements which the former forbids, and thus 
prolongs the crudities and falsehoods of the past. 
Hence in all civilized society we see institutions, 
usages, and even sentiments holding their ground 
firmly among the masses which are in contradiction 
to the highest intelligence of the period. 

Thus is war retained in the animal nature of man, 
and claimed as a national creed even after the major- 
ity of the population have outgrown the savage pas- 



2j 2 MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 

sions which demand it. It is retained as a supposed 
necessity, a matter of national glory, national protec- 
tion and patriotism, under the fixed conviction that 
foreign powers are necessarily hostile. To change 
these convictions — to enlighten men as to their univer- 
sal fraternity, to promote international friendly inter- 
course, especially in education, and to supersede the 
admiration of war, generated by means of dazzling 
histories, with faithful pictures of its horrid nature, 
would destroy that lingering sentiment by which war 
is admired, tolerated and retained. 

Under such an education the press and pulpit would 
pour forth such denunciations of war such luminous 
pictures of its horrors, as would render it impossible, 
and compel the organization of courts of arbitration 
for all nations. 

It cannot be very far off in the future that the cry for 
peace and for arbitration will arise from the victimized 
proletariat, as well as from the more enlightened and 
from the great religious teachers who are yet to come, 
and whom the law of evolution and progress must 
bring forth. Even now, a great orator with power to 
move men's souls and touch the fountain of tears 
might bring all statesmen to deliberate and plan for 
arbitation, and rouse a popular demand for disarma- 
ment. 

He would ask if the men of Christendom are ever 
to live as jealous banditti, with one hand grasping the 
sword; the knife or the gun, to the neglect of every 
righteous duty — and the toilers of Christendom are 
ever to be robbed of all that would enable them to 
escape poverty and beggary, aye, and even of the 
amount that would save them from dying of famine. Is 
Moloch or Christ the leader of European civilization ? 
Assuredly it is Moloch if we judge by the relative 
amounts of wealth, time and labor given to homicide 
and to benevolence, and from the smouldering fires of 
national hate at the present time (May, 1881), when 
the gun-works of Krupp* are running day and night 

* By the latest statements it appears that 13,000 men are at work 
in the cannon manufacture of Krupp. 



MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 273 

to keep up with the demand for additional artillery in 
nations already loaded down with arms. 

Major East estimated the entire military force of 
France at 2,473,866 trained men, including the active 
and territorial armies and their reserves. Under the 
present law, every Frenchman between 20 and 40 years 
is subject to personal military service, no substitute 
being allowed. Every Frenchman capable of military 
service is bound to serve five years in the regular army, 
four years in its reserve, and six years in the reserve 
of the territorial army. Nearly three hundred thou- 
sand young men are drawn in each year by allotment, 
and 

The active army comprised 719,366 

The active army reserve, 520,982 

The territorial army 594, 736 

The territorial army reserve 638,782 

The navy contains. 3 5, 108 

Thus is the entire population of France, excepting 
only clergymen, women and those physically disquali- 
fied, converted into a military camp, in which fifteen 
years of training are expected to make a perfect sol- 
dier. Two and a half millions of men trained to glory 
in homicide are a terrible spectacle, and a menace to 
the peace of the world. They find their ideal in Na- 
poleon, and no word from their religious teachers, 
nothing in their literature, nothing even in the instruc- 
tions of the home circle, counteracts the terrible spirit 
of brigandage thus fostered. All is polluted — the 
whole atmosphere of society is false, and pervaded by 
admiration for the sword. Living thus in an all-per- 
vading moral malaria, which, like physical malaria, 
brings on its regular paroxysmal fevers (checked but 
never cured by military blood-letting), there is perhaps 
no salvation for Europeans but by the sanitary wis- 
dom which takes the patient out of that malaria and 
permits his restoration by a healthy atmosphere. In 
the peaceful atmosphere of the United States the tur- 
bulent populations of Europe may approximate moral 
health, and gradually lose the fiery passions that would 
regulate all things by violence or by despotic laws. 



274 MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 

But until the moral malaria from standing armies is 
destroyed by their suppression, there is no hope for 
the high moral elevation of Europe. 

The life of the soldier is a Satanic life, because its 
idol is homicidal force. It is void of all ennobling in- 
fluences but firmness, obedience and the sense of 
honor enforced by flogging,* blows and death penal- 
ties, and, like all lives from which love is excluded, 
it is dreary, monotonous, morbid, and brief. Soldiers, 
like professional athletes and celibates, are short-lived. 
The nation that surrenders to the spirit of physical 
force and avarice is withheld from any high destiny. 
Its population becomes stationary, while nations that 
know more of love increase and fill the earth. 

The church which has had heretofore the training of 
the men who become soldiers has done far more to in- 
tensify their military ferocity than to inculcate true 
and peaceful religion. The extent to which they are 
controlled by the wildest and most inflammable pas- 
sions has often been demonstrated. According to our 
minister, Mr. Washburne, " the state of the populace in 
Paris on the day when it was circulated that the French 
minister had been insulted by the German emperor 
w T as very marked. All the cafes and places of amuse- 
ment were filled, and Paris was literally rampant for 
war. The German residents were terror-stricken." 
u When the dire intelligence of Sedan reached them, 
their rage and disappointment knew no bounds. " 
"The history of France during the Franco-German 
war, and that of Paris during the Commune, might be 
styled an avalanche of pride and savage despotism. 
Never perhaps in ancient or modern times had such a 
city fallen into such a dreadful abyss of brute force 
and violence" — which culminated in a war costing 
$2,500,000,000 and 185,370 lives. 

This eruption of violence was but the display of a 
chronic condition — the condition that exists to-day 

* An English member of Parliament, Sir H. D. Wolfe, told his 
constituents in a speech that in Russia, Germany and Austria he 
had nearly every day seen soldiers struck in the face by officers. 






MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 2^ 

after seventeen centuries of so-called Christianity and 
education. Wherein is it superior to the moral con- 
ditions of Rome and Greece ? The military leader of 
Germany, Von Moltke, has asserted recently that 
"eternal peace is a dream" — that " war is an institu- 
tion of Divine origin. A long peace is dangerous and 
demoralizing to any nation." To deify war and hate — 
to pronounce peace and love demoralizing — is moral 
insanity. War is the embodiment of all that is hellish 
in the possibilities of humanity, not only in the cruel- 
ties of the battle-field witnessed with callousness and 
inflicted with joy, but in its utter lawlessness, con- 
tinually surging on to general rapine and devastation, 
and in the degradation of the soldier to greater suffer- 
ings, severer punishments and more complete neglect 
and isolation than was ever realized in negro slavery. 
And after all, when armies are even disbanded, there 
remains the legacy of degraded principles, fierce pas- 
sions, and mighty debts that crush the laborer with 
hopeless toil. 

All legislation looking to war is deadly, and I may 
say even criminal, for it stimulates counter-arming by 
jealousy and hate. Frenchmen speak of revenge, and 
Germany looks with continual apprehension towards 
France, Russia and Italy, and prepares with an equal 
mobilization of her people and devotion of her wealth 
to war. The spirit of war fills every government as 
well as the people, and the suggestions of disarma- 
ment which have been made by Louis Napoleon, Bis- 
marck and Gortchakoff, have never been seriously 
entertained by the politicians or seriously thought of 
by the church. Murderous force is the only God in 
which Europe trusts. " It is too obvious," said the Lon- 
don Times recently, " that the instruments are ready to 
hand and are being daily sharpened for a possible war, 
more tremendous, at least in its immediate convul- 
sions, than any yet w T aged among civilized nations. The 
systematic increase of the armaments of the chief conti- 
nental States is as menacing to the peace of Europe as it 
is injurious to the domestic interests of these countries 
themselves. But at the same time it must be acknowl- 



276 MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE, 

edged that no one of the great powers could at the present 
moment forego with safety strenuous military preparations" 
In other words, to live among the Christian nations with 
a moderate armament is as dangerous as to travel 
among the mountain brigands of Italy without a load 
of side-arms and a ready-cocked revolver. 

It is a sad illustration of the character of Christen- 
dom that we Americans are indebted for our high civ- 
ilization and liberty to the fact that a portion of the 
blood-thirsty nations of Europe was isolated from the 
remainder by a channel of the sea, and thus protected 
were enabled to make some progress in the art of gov- 
ernment and the industries of peace, instead of being 
overrun, devastated, impoverished and enslaved by 
their robber neighbors. But, alas, the entire breadth of 
the Atlantic Ocean was not sufficient to protect the 
peaceful and happy population of Mexico and South 
America from Spanish brigandage under the official 
sanction of the Papal church. 

The public sentiment of Europe is brutalized by ages 
of war, and when deprived of homicidal pleasure it 
riots in the luxury of hunting wild animals in costly 
parks, as in America the same impulse indulges in the 
wanton slaughter of buffaloes for the mere pleasure of 
shooting. In Spain it glories in bull-fights, in England 
in prize-fights, and on the continent in duels. What 
hope is there for mankind while these vast armaments 
are maintained ? Germany, according to Zimmer- 
man's history, had underarms in August, 1870, 1,183,- 
389 men and 250,373 horses. Recently Germany has 
prepared a movable force of 779 battalions (and cav- 
alry in addition) which in ten or eleven days could be 
hurled against any frontier. 

In 1881 there will be in the 

German field army 771,749 

reserve 341,480 

landwehr 293,020 

garrisons 125, 834 

Ersatz reserve , 340,000 

1,872,083 



MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 2^ 

The military preparations of Germany, Russia and 
France are nearly equal to-day, but are compared with 
jealous vigilance. A French officer who has resided 
at Berlin has estimated the entire available military 
power of Germany at more than three millions of men, 
and the Avenir Militaire says, after a careful examina- 
tion, that France must make additions to its military 
force to equal the Germans in numerical strength in 
1881. 

On the other hand, a Prussian officer of rank, whose 
sentiments are endorsed by the official press, says that 
Germany had not a man to spare in her late contest 
with France, and that the active army of France on a 
peace footing is stronger than the German in every- 
thing but cavalry, and the reserve territorial army is 
as numerous and efficient as the German Landwehr. 
Hence he maintained the active army must be in- 
creased, the Landwehr prepared for war, and the Land- 
sturm developed to the position of the Landwehr, for 
Germany must prepare with the aid of Austria to en- 
counter France, Russia, and Italy. 

Russian official reports in January, 1856, the time of 
the Crimean war, claimed a force of 2,257,454 men, 
and in 1879, 1,820,169 — numbers no doubt greatly ex- 
aggerated. England's half million consisted of the 
army 336,755, and volunteers 244,263 = 581,018. 

Europe has probably nine or ten millions of men 
enrolled and liable to be called on for military duty. 
Col. Barnaby says 9,500,000 soldiers and 250,000 of 
naval forces. Professor H. Von Hoist estimates the 
standing armies of continental Europe as more than one 
per cent of the entire population, which would be fully 
six per cent of the efficient males. Recent statistics 
show that in France during the last eight years there 
were 1,154,796 men who had passed through the ranks 
of the active French army whose average term of 
service was about three years. The fierce temper 
generated by such an education as this was shown in 
the recent rioting between the French and Italians at 
Marseilles, caused solely by the Italian jealousy of the 
French invasion of Tunis and the reciprocal irritation 



278 MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 

of the French population. Meantime the immense 
Krupp gun-works in Germany are kept in constant 
activity to increase the power of destruction — new 
buildings are put up, the army of employes increased, 
and the work driven day and night. 

Can there be a more savage conception of society 
than is thus revealed ? Great nations fitted to help 
each other in a thousand ways in their industrial 
prosperity and intellectual progress, without a single 
cause of quarrel or any serious conflict of interest, 
professing in their governmental institutions, laws, 
and systems of education to be governed by the ethics 
of Jesus Christ, and yet each firmly convinced that 
the others look on with the glaring eyes of hungry 
wolves that surround a traveller, and only delay their 
attack while they fear his power. 

Is not all this the direct result of the education or 
lack of education among civilized races, an education 
pervaded by the sentiment of military glory, a science, 
philosophy and social order all antagonistic to the re- 
ligion of love, and a ruling power which prefers war to 
education ? A few years since a French statistician, M. 
Manier, estimated the relative amounts appropriated 
to war and to education as follows: 

For War. For Education 

France $59 °° $ 2 2 ° 

Prussia 55 20 2 80 

Russia 54 °o 3 8 ° 

Bavaria 43 80 4 40 

Wurtemberg 43 60 9 60 

Saxony 42 80 7 80 

Grand Duchy of Baden 36 40 6 60 

Everywhere we find the insane, pessimistic idea that 
a nation's dignity and safety depend solely upon her 
being able to overawe or conquer her neighbor. A 
position of inferior military power is considered al- 
most equivalent to national destruction. A pamphlet 
on France and Prussia, recently published in Paris, 
says: "Of all the dangers that threaten France, her an- 
nihilation in Europe is the most important," that is, the 
loss of her military prestige. This was the melancholy 



MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 279 

idea that pervaded the writings of M. Paradol, the 
French Minister at Washington — the gloomy anticipa- 
tion of what he considered the ruin of France, the de- 
cline of her military importance in Europe — a strange 
hallucination of pessimism, the psychic origin of which 
was displayed when his melancholy drove him to 
suicide. War and pessimism are natural associates, 
and the increase of military power and oppression will 
rill Europe with pessimistic philosophy and intensify 
her religious materialism. 

The only gleam of hope on the dark horizon of Eu- 
rope is to the westward. As a tribe smothering in a 
mephitic cave may look to its western outlet, so may 
the populations of Europe, borne to the earth by debt, 
poverty and tyranny, look to free America. Nature 
refuses to proceed under the gloomy conditions of 
European life which illustrate the principle, the farther 
from God and divine law the nearer to destruction. 
It takes a hundred years to duplicate a population 
under the debasing conditions of European life, while 
the duplication occurs in twenty-six years in the United 
States, and thus we may anticipate a population of 
800,000,000 in the United States before Europe shall 
have attained 600,000,000. 

Our own American experience of war, calamitous 
as it has been, has not impressed our statesmen with 
the paramount importance of peace. The Federal 
expenditure for war from 1861 to 1879 was $6,187,- 
243,385, and Mr. Stevens as historian of the Confed- 
erate States says that it cost that section $11,000,- 
000,000. The poverty and distress in the South, and 
the heavy taxation, pauperism, tramps, bankruptcies 
and paralysis at the North, should have made a 
deeper impression than they have. But, alas, the 
warlike spirit is in our people, and without moral 
education we must expect future convulsions — in 
fact we have already narrowly escaped a cruel war, 
and although we are in a commanding position to 
introduce an era of peaCe, American statesmanship 
has not embraced the thought, and the American 
pulpit is more reliable for fanning the flames of civil 



28o MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE, 

or foreign war than for promoting peace. Where, 
alas, where is a controlling statesman in Europe who 
can rise above the gladiatorial spirit, who can regret 
a past war or provide anything against future wars 
but gunpowder and conscription. Where can we find 
any national regret for the military crimes of nations 
or any reluctance to repeat them ? It was Garibaldi 
who spoke for peace when jealousies arose between 
Italy and France on account of the campaign in Tunis, 
and in speaking of a Franco-Italian war he said in 
his letter, " I think our corpses will have to be tram- 
pled on before that monstrosity is realized." "An 
Italian a French citizen in France, a Frenchman an 
Italian citizen in Italy, such is the goal we should 
reach. No more barriers, no more frontiers, com- 
plete equality — a fraternity which may serve as a basis 
for human fraternity." 

Victor Hugo is in sympathy with the martial im- 
pulses of the French people, and it is in vain that 
we look for any trace of a national conscience in 
discussions of war questions. France threatens, Ger- 
many arms, and all Europe acts as if expecting to be 
engaged in a struggle for life* — the ever-impending 

* The spirit that keeps up military armaments is well illustrated 
in the following newspaper statement: " The Berlin Post, which is 
a sober conservative newspaper, and may be safely taken to ex- 
press the opinion of most Germans on the subject, writes as fol- 
lows: * Freely translated, M. Gambetta said, "We are arming to 
the teeth, not to fight when we are armed, but to bide our time; 
and our time will come when we are strong and the enemy weak 
or hampered. As far as we are concerned, to bring about this 
time is our affair; and as for the enemy, the affair of eternal jus- 
tice for which we are at present waiting." Now, that is all very 
good. We Germans, however, would reply, It is our affair to 
take care that we are never weak, never hampered by our own im- 
prudence, and if we acted like the French in their unceasing zeal 
to be strong we should probably one day arrive at the conviction 
that we should both do best to put away our weapons. We Ger- 
mans would readily do so. A bright idea lately occurred to the 
French that they could squeeze out of us the last farthing by the 
burden of the armaments they imposed on us, while their riches 
would comfortably enable them to support theirs. But in this cal- 
culation there is a serious error. A colossal army which does not 
fight, but merely compels the enemy to be armed, is intolerable.'" 



MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 28 1 

explosion of national jealousy, the costliest of all delu- 
sions, the source of debts that enslave the millions. 

The Franco-German war was a vast destruction of 
life and property — to France, according to M.Villefort, 
a direct cost of $2,943,000,000 besides the losses to pri- 
vate individuals and the interruption of business. 
Who can compute the losses in personal suffering ? 
723,602 Frenchmen were taken prisoners, and victori- 
ous Germany had 290,000 in field hospitals and 812,- 
021 in reserve hospitals. $800,000,000 per annum, ac- 
cording to the Frankfurt Zeitung, is the estimated cost 
to Europe of its miltary establishments. 

This is amply sufficient, if there were no other edu- 
cational fund, to place the three hundred and sixteen 
millions of Europeans beyond the reach of war, crime, 
famine, pestilence and poverty by a thorough moral 
and industrial education. By keeping fifty millions of 
the young continually under tuition, a thorough phys- 
iological, hygienic, industrial, moral and intellectual 
education — a liberal education in the noblest sense of 
that expression — could be given to the entire people 
which would insure their spontaneous intellectual 
progress through life, insure their industrial pros- 
perity and rapid progress in the arts, inventions and 
agriculture, thus abolishing poverty, and soon exter- 
minate crime and intemperance, abolish war forever, 
and remove every hindrance to a religious condition 
of society which, when established in any one great 
country, would by its fervent zeal and moral power 
overrun the globe. 

This is not an idle dream or hope. Its consummation 
will approach whenever moral education shall be under- 
stood and appreciated by the authorities or by the 
teachers of any nation. 

If this small volume could reach the intelligence and 
the conscience of our legislators and teachers, America 
might lead the world under the white banner of eter- 
nal peace and unvarying prosperity. If it can be acted 
on by the enlightened rulers of that most progressive 
and most amiable of nations, the Japanese, they may 
snatch from our sturdy grasp the banner of leadership, 



282 MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 

and by superior ethical merit become the representa- 
tives of the highest civilization, for which they are so 
well qualified by their high-toned sense of honor and 
unselfish virtues. 

But the horrors of war are not fully expressed by 
standing armies, their cost and their crimes. The debts 
entailed by war are like a cancer upon the body of so- 
ciety, and surpass in their costliness the military bud- 
get. A thousand millions of dollars would not pay the 
annual interest on European war debts at five per 
cent. 

The entire debts of European States (which are 
due to wars) have risen in former years (from 1865 
to 1879) from ^2,626,000,000 to ^4,324,000,000 (and 
have nearly doubled since 1848). The annual cost of 
government has therefore been nearly doubled by 
war debts and armies. Germany has increased from 
^31,000,000 to ^66,000,000; Russia from ;£s 1,000,- 
000 to ^107,000,000, and France has reached ^119,- 
000,000. Eight hundred millions of dollars are now 
the annual cost of European armies, Russia alone 
expending $180,000,000. This annual cost of war in 
times of peace is surpassed by its permanent burden 
from the past, and as every war adds to the mass of 
unpaid debts, while every armament stimulates coun- 
ter-armament and demands more soldiers, guns, and 
ships, what ease or hope can ever come to the fevered 
constitution of European society ? 

Italy is continually meditating upon war instead of 
attending to her wretched laborers* and beggars. In 
the midst of her most beautiful and fertile regions in 



* " It has often been observed that Italians will undertake the 
most noisome labor, and that they live more frugally than any 
other class in the community. But to thousands of them the hard- 
est life here must be luxury to what they have known at home. 
The Pavian Reporter tells us that in the richest districts may be 
seen a population morally reduced to the level of brutes and physi- 
cally ruined by the inhuman severity of its labor, infamous food 
and shameful lodging. The proprietors and their agents appear to 
be utterly indifferent to the condition of the laborers, " — N. Y. Times, 
May 12, i88j, 



MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 283 

Lombardy from five to eight per cent of the popula- 
tion are slowly dying from pellagra, which is simply 
the result of an insufficiency of wholesome food. At 
the lowest estimate there are more than 100,000 vic- 
tims at present. It would be more humane to send 
them forth at once as " food for gunpowder," for then 
they might have wholesome rations and a less hideous 
death. From the midst of this starving population, 
w T ith wages from ten to twenty cents a day,* the gov- 
ernment takes fifteen millions of dollars to build four 
monster iron-clads, the Duilio, Dandola, Italia and Le- 
panto, with iron armor twenty-two inches thick, 
and as fast as monster cannon are constructed to shatter 
two or three feet thickness of iron, the defensive ar- 
mor is increased. Millions are sunk in this insane 
rivalry, while every French or German regiment re- 
cruited brings forth new regiments, cannon and forts 
across the national boundary, and no increase of pov- 
erty or famine in the robbed peasantry suggests any 
mercy or any moderation in this race of death and 
ruin. Centuries of war have obliterated the senti- 
ments of national philanthropy, and rivalry among 
nations as among bravos suggests additional weapons. 
The King of Spain, in speaking to the Cortes, blind to 
the need of education and industry to uplift a ruined 
nation, suggests military and naval armament to ena- 
ble Spain to reconquer her position among nations ! 
India, with her terrible periodical famines, sweeping 
off in Madras alone 500,000 in five months of 1877, and 
in some of the northern provinces " more than half 
the population" (according to Mr. Hunter, the Direc- 
tor General of Statistics for the Government of India), 
and with her ever-present poverty, can expend half a 
million daily in a military campaign, and eighty or 
ninety millions of dollars annually on her standing 
army. Citizens die of starvation that soldiers may be 
fed to sustain a government generally detested, by 
which, the Poona Mahratta newspaper says, " in one of 

* At a hemp manufactory at Florence the wages were 15 cents 
for fourteen hours' work. 



284 MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 

the Indian provinces the public generally are treated as 
if they were something less than dogs/' The starvation 
of the poor to feed soldiers was a matter of indigna- 
tion when the famine fund raised by a tax burden- 
some on the poor was shamefully diverted to meet 
the expenses of the Afghan war. 

Statesmanship infected by this prevailing hard- 
heartedness has not yet seriously considered the 
gloomy present and gloomier future. D'Israeli, Louis 
Napoleon, Bismarck and Gortchakoff have been merely 
leaders in national bravado and bloody rivalry, and 
the conscience of their nations does not repudiate 
their bloody leadership, with which an apostate Chris- 
tianity is thoroughly identified. The peace which put 
an honorable end to the cruel and criminal invasion 
of the Transvaal Republic in South Africa by England 
was bitterly denounced by a powerful party in Eng- 
land through Lord Salisbury and Lord Cairns in the 
House of Lords as a " burning shame," and even the 
surrender of Lord Cornwallis to Washington was re- 
ferred to as something deeply regretted, which dark- 
ened the annals of England. 

There is little hope for Europe except that the keen 
suffering of the laborers may in time rouse them to 
the consciousness that they are enslaved and plun- 
dered, and that war is their greatest enemy.* The 
statesman who could lead them in a movement for 
peace would be the Moses of civilization, the greatest 
philanthropist of history. 

Possibly some one may arise in England and bring 
to bear upon the national conscience the potent argu- 
ment of personal danger. The indisputable fact that 
Great Britain is no longer a formidable military 
power or even ruler of the seas — that within one month 
or at least two months England could be overrun by 
a French or German army, since they surpass her in 



* There is some popular aversion to the army developed in Ger- 
many, for although the pay of a sub-lieutenant is two or three times 
as great as that of a professor or a parson, it is found difficult to 
supply the army with officers. 



MORA L ED UCA TION A ND PEA CE. 285 

military development as five to one — should teach the 
British government that safety for their nation is to be 
found only in peace and arbitration. 

But whence can we derive our hopes under present 
systems of education, government, and religion, when 
education, government, and religion are saturated 
with the demonism of war? Bismarck professes re- 
ligious sentiments, and the German army is the most 
highly educated body of men ever arrayed for the 
work of death, and not only intellectually educated, 
but subjected to a considerable amount of moral su- 
pervision and training, but it is not a religious body, 
and if it were pervaded by the state religion of 
Europe, it would be none the less homicidal in its ten- 
dencies. There must be a true religion, the religion 
of Jesus Christ, instilled by moral education, before the 
homicidal spirit can be quelled. There can be no true 
civilization while the leaders of mankind are actuated 
by the sentiments expressed by Von Moltke to Prof. 
Bluntschli : u War is an element in the order of the 
world ordained by God. In it the noblest virtues of 
mankind are developed — courage and the abnegation 
of self, faithfulness to duty, and the spirit of sacrifice; 
the soldier gives his life. Without war the world 
would stagnate and lose itself in materialism"! ! 

This is indeed the strongest argument that can be 
offered in favor of war, but it applies with nearly equal 
force to the life of the brigand whom society every- 
where condemns to the gibbet. The robber and the 
pirate may be brave, graceful, accomplished, faithful 
to comrades, and even generous, but they are a curse 
to society, and so is the army which lives by robbing 
industry of its earnings and which compels neighboring 
nations to arm and watch at vast expense, as house- 
holders, unprotected by law, must arm and watch 
against roaming burglars. 

National brigandage must in time be repressed by 
international law whenever divine love shall be suffi- 
ciently developed in humanity to cross the national 
boundaries and establish international fraternity. 

The horrible incongruity with the professed Chris- 



286 MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 

tian religion of all this vast apparatus of homicide is 
not generally realized either in the church, the college, 
or in the halls of legislation, nor even in the most re- 
fined circles of female society, where the tenderest sen- 
timents are felt. Woman has so entirely been exclud- 
ed from the sphere of political power and from even 
the knowledge of governmental matters, that she looks 
upon the wars and military establishments, in which 
her own children are to shed their blood, much as our 
ancestors looked upon the progress of a pestilence 
which they ascribed to the divine wrath and consid- 
ered entirely Beyond their own control. Peace will per- 
haps be insured when woman shall be educated up to 
the high responsibility of her position and shall de- 
mand and receive her share in government. 

It would even seem that war is regarded as an es- 
sentially Christian institution, since British soldiers 
are reported as generally belonging to the church. Of 
184,067 soldiers constituting the army, 114,031 are offi- 
cially reported as belonging to the Church of Eng- 
land, 39,743 as Roman Catholics, and 7462 as belong- 
ing to Protestant denominations. 

The chaplains are a portion of the equipment of all 
armies, and however profligate, villanous or murder- 
ous a war may be, the church lends its sanction 
through its chaplains. The wretched Hessian merce- 
naries hired to assist in enslaving the American col- 
onies were accompanied by their chaplains. One of 
these Hessian chaplains said in a letter from Brook- 
lyn, dated September 7, 1776: "Our dear Hessians 
learned to bear the hardships of the sea, and I endeav- 
ored in my prayers and sermons to strengthen them in their 
Christian heroism." 

Identified as chaplains are with the cause for which 
they pray, and to which their zealous efforts lend the 
same support as the fifer and drummer, it is not 
strange that they sometimes take part in the actual 
fighting. 

When I realize all these horrors, the embattled 
hosts of brutalized men, the toil and degrading pov- 
erty of the millions who sustain the blood-draining 



MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE, 2%J 

power, the continual preparation for homicide as if 
it were the chief end of national existence, the de- 
moralizing power of the passions thus nursed, the 
self-perpetuating power of this infernal fire in human 
souls, and the agonies of battle-fields covered with 
mangled, groaning, dying men for whom despairing 
wives, mothers, and children are mourning, I realize 
the heroic impulse of the brave monk Almachius, who 
rushed into the gladiatorial arena at Rome to arrest 
the progress of the brutal scene, and gladly would 
I throw away my remnant of life to-day if it would 
be the means of arresting a single war. 

To that sentiment all men should be brought up — 
to a heroic determination that war shall cease, and that 
no two nations shall be allowed to engage in the hell- 
ish crimes and degradation of war. A single great 
nation bravely bent on the establishment of peace 
throughout the world could effect it. Whenever moral 
education shall have reared one generation in the 
United States, there will be a power competent to es- 
tablish universal peace. 

As a first step to the reign of true religion, peace on 
earth and good-will among men, the glory and glam- 
our of war should be abolished, not only by more 
truthful histories in which its infamies and horrors 
should be unveiled, but by taking off its tinsel and 
glitter, which are so delusive. The abolition of the 
drum in France and the proposed abolition of military 
standards are good movements. Let us abolish all 
expenditure for distinctive and ornamental uniforms, 
which are simply a needless expense to glorify war 
and hide its hideousness. Abolish the plume, the 
banner, the helmet, the drum and fife, the trumpet, 
the epaulette, and the useless ornamental sword, and 
let the parading soldier understand that he is simply 
drilled to learn to march in mud and dust, to starve, 
to lie on the ground, to shoot, to be wounded and to 
die. away from home by wounds or disease in the 
struggle to inflict the same miseries on others, against 
whom he has no cause of offence — men whom God 
commanded him to love. 



288 MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 

Let him carry his knapsack and march all day re- 
gardless of weather to realize what a campaign is, car- 
rying his hard crackers and dry beef, and lying on the 
ground at least one night before he returns to com- 
fortable life. It was a capital illustration of the utter 
heartlessness of everything military, which the deluded 
recruit overlooks, when the First Brigade of the First 
Division of the New York National Guard lost as many 
men as in a moderate battle by a parade on the 12th 
of May, 1881, which common humanity ought to have 
forbidden if common humanity has anything to do 
with military parades. It was the more inhuman and 
unpardonable as a previous experience had given 
warning when on a Fourth of July parade on Eighth 
and Fifth avenues seven men were killed and a score 
permanently injured. At the Prospect Park parade- 
ground in May, " over seventy-five men were prostrat- 
ed by the heat, and there were fourteen genuine cases 
of sun-stroke. The thermometer was at 95 , and the 
men fell so rapidly that common sense and common 
humanity came to the rescue, and the disgraceful 
scene was ended by a dismissal. 

We have seen in this brief study of the innate power 
and educability of humanity, as demonstrated by an- 
thropology and by extensive experience in colleges, 
kindergartens, reformatories and State prisons, that 
the abolition of crime in young criminals and the abo- 
lition of vices and evil passions in the young generally 
are within the power of moral education. It will be 
easy to abolish that national jealousy between the 
French and Germans, the Germans and Russians, 
which makes war an imminent danger. The educa- 
tion together of the leading youth of each nation in 
schools like that of Fellenberg would make war impos- 
sible if all the appliances of moral education were used. 

The establishment of moral education for thirty 
years would totally change the character of any nation, 
rendering the irascible French and Irish, the domi- 
neering English and the haughty Spanish alike reason- 
able and emulous to excel each other in international 
courtesy and hospitality. 



MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 289 

It is as much the false education as the evil passion 
of man that renders war a possibility now, as human 
sacrifices were possible when superstition demanded 
them. The vast armies of the American civil war 
quietly disbanded and resumed the pursuits of peace. 
Old soldiers are surrounded by women and children, 
to whom they are affectionate protectors. The vet- 
erans of opposing armies, Federal and Confederate, 
French and British, settle together in terms of amity 
like the most peaceable citizens. Yet the very men 
who in times of peace look with horror upon riot and 
murder lose their humanity when enlisted for war, 
and no longer consider homicide and arson crimes, 
for such is their education. But the demonism which 
has been introduced by an education deriving its 
primal impulse from barbarous ages, can be easily ex- 
orcised by moral education. Opposing armies that 
might listen under a flag of truce to a true religious 
teacher might mingle in Christian fraternity as cor- 
dially as three thousand Confederate prisoners once 
cheered Gen. Joseph Hooker on hearing from him a 
few words of respectful kindness. This spring the 
Knights Templar of Boston and Providence have vis- 
ited Richmond, Va., and decorated with flowers the 
statue of Stonewall Jackson, while standing with un- 
covered heads. A New York regiment has been re- 
ceived with boundless hospitality in New Orleans, and 
the Confederate soldiers have convened at Chatta- 
nooga to give a cordial reception to the Federal veter- 
ans, the Society of the Army of the Cumberland, when 
it meets in September at Chattanooga. 

Even the cannibals of Fiji, once reckoned the most 
ferocious and brutal savages, and some of whom still 
carry their old cannibal names, as " Blood-drinker," 
etc., are thoroughly reclaimed in one generation, sup- 
porting now 900 Methodist chapels and an ample 
number of school-houses. There is not an Indian 
tribe that we might not have made a peaceable and 
friendly agricultural people with far less expenditure 
than we have sunk in Indian wars. 

Capt. R. H. Pratt, of the United States army, gave 



29O MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE, 

one of the first practical demonstrations of this upon 
prisoners captured in war from an Indian tribe. In- 
stead of sending them to prison he sent them to 
school, and in three years so changed their habits and 
characters as to justify their release, since which they 
have given no trouble. Upon this experience was 
based the successful Indian school at Carlisle, Pa., 
which accommodates about 250 Indian boys and 
girls. * 

The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute 
has about 400 students, over eighty being Indians. It 
is an admirable example of industrial education and 
co-education. 

* Secretary Schurz sard at a meeting in New York in 1881: "I 
shall look upon the establishment of the schools at Hampton and 
Carlisle with great satisfaction. If you should visit those schools 
you would be astonished to see intelligence dawning in their 
countenance. They not only learn there to read and write, but 
they learn to live and to work. A few weeks ago 50 sets of dou- 
ble harness were sent to the army made by the Indian boys at 
Carlisle. In a short time we will furnish not only harness from 
Carlisle, but wagons too. Gen. Armstrong and Capt. Pratt must 
be particularly mentioned for their good work among these chil- 
dren. Let nobody disturb you by saying that when the pupils 
return to their tribes they will become savages again. That may 
have been the case when civilization was not in demand among 
the Indians. But things have wonderfully changed. The old 
mode of life is felt to be untenable. They know that work will 
become necessary — that knowledge will be in demand to that 
end. Even the old fogy chiefs want to see their children edu- 
cated. An educated Indian is no longer ridiculed, but envied. 
There is no danger now of his relapsing into a savage life. He 
will be a teacher and a leader. The system at these schools calls 
for very large extension. Congress ought to be liberal to edu- 
cate the Indians. Hampton is not a government institution. 
Instead of two schools we ought to have fifteen in various parts 
of the older States. We want particularly to enable Gen. Arm- 
strong to erect a building for the education of Indian girls. Indian 
women have always been only beasts of burden. No human so- 
ciety can be good where woman is not recognized as an equal. 
Woman makes the atmosphere and must make the attraction of 
the human home. If we want the Indians to respect their women, 
we must teach the women to respect themselves. I commend this 
object mainly to your consideration. The time will come when we 
will speak no more of Sioux and Apaches, but of good and orderly 
American citizens of Indian descent." [Applause.] 



MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 29 1 

It is among the young that education shows its 
sovereign power, and as great a revolution can be 
achieved among children in a month as among adults 
in thirty years. The New Education says, speaking of 
the first institution of kindergartens among neglected 
children: 

11 The first few days the kindergarten is like a menagerie of lit- 
tle wild beasts, tearing and pounding each other, talking profane 
and foul language, rebellious, and selfish — all the vices being dis- 
played'in miniature. In a week's time order has dawned, for de- 
lightful occupations have chained attention; beautiful sights and 
sounds, and lovely sentiments set to music, have charmed eye and 
ear and heart; harmonious and dramatic plays have been organ- 
ized ; kind words and caresses have waked a new sense of enjoyment, 
and in less than a month it is a little, orderly, docile, and compli- 
ant company, in which all are agreeable to each other, forming 
little friendships and making sacrifices." 

" Suffer little children to come unto me," said Jesus; 
and I repeat, let them come : bring them away from 
the sphere of ignorance, animalism, selfishness, antag- 
onism and universal war, in which they are now grow- 
ing up, and lead them through the delightful paths of 
ethical education to the perfect manhood of love, duty 
and happiness. 

One lesson is most impressively taught by the re- 
view of our social conditions — the folly, fatality, and 
costliness of the evil passions, and the benignant, ele- 
vating, wealth-producing power of the Divine princi- 
ples of Christ, which would put an end to national de- 
vastation and remove the military cancer that absorbs 
the prosperity, the virtue, and the liberty of nations, 
perpetuating poverty, despotism and crime. Mere 
moralism tolerates resentment, retaliation, and war; 
religion forbids these evils. 

As an element in political economy, a factor of na- 
tional wealth, the religion of Christ is worth all the 
mechanical discoveries and financial wisdom that have 
ever been introduced, while as an element of educa- 
tion it is worth all else, for with it all the rest, whether 
intellectual, artistic, or hygienic, attain their maximum 
development and value, while without it they all fail 



292 MORAL EDUCATION AND PEACE. 

in development like the meagre vegetation of a barren 
soil, and, however developed, are practically worth- 
less. It were better that a man should not be born 
than that he should be born without the Divine ele- 
ment of love. 

The establishment of the Divine religion as the con- 
trolling portion of the nature and constitution of man 
is the function of moral education, and when this shall 
be comprehended and done, the millennial civilization 
will begin. 



CHAPTER XI. 
THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

Prosperity and progress dependent on industrial education and the 
prosperity of the industrial classes. — Common-school education 
does not prevent social degeneracy and crime. — Need for a bet- 
ter education. — Criticisms of R. G. White upon New York 
schools and their demoralizing influence. — Miseducation of 
American girls. — Schools unfavorable to industry and integrity. 
— Their intellectual training inefficient. — Industrial education 
practicable and cheap, as proved by the industrial schools of 
Paris. — Belgian schools. — Success of the Hampton Institute. — 
Education among the Choctaws. — Self-support by industrial 
students. — All industrial improvement sacrificed by war. — Edu- 
cation has failed in intellectual development. — Fostering neither 
reason nor invention, it leaves mankind creatures of habit and 
prejudice. — Hostility to higher teachers in religion and philoso- 
phy and to unrecognized genius. — Education does not make 
valuable citizens. — Our educational system not attractive to the 
lower classes. — Testimony against the moral influences of edu- 
cation. — Benefits of industrial schools. — Attested by Pennsyl- 
vania Legislature. — Society degenerating in sphere of educa- 
tion. — Degeneracy shown in England by diminished size of 
heads. — Great increase of suicide and insanity. — Statistics of the 
vast number of teachers and the large endowments of colleges 
and universities. — Great increase of educational expenditures. — 
Increase of education and increase of misery. — Increase of in- 
sanity in European countries, in New York and Massachusetts. 
— The increase coinciding with education. — Personal degen- 
eracy: half the recruits of European armies unfit for service. — 
Increased mortality and diminished longevity during the lastfif- 
ty years. — Mortality by consumption. — Increase of pauperism. 
— Terrible increase of intemperance in Great Britain, Sweden 
and the United States. — Corresponding increase of crime. — 
Five causes of social degeneracy: concentration in cities, military 
conscription, industrial ignorance, gambling competition, city 
filth and unwholesome food. — Education remedies none of 
these evils. — Increase of crime in Britain, Holland, France, 
Norway and United States. — Illegitimacy and prostitution. — 
Decline of religion, increase of agnosticism and materialism. — 
Opinions of philanthropists. — Encouraging indications. 

We have reached a crisis in which the educational 
battle against social evils has begun; and if we realize 



294 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

the vast extent of the evils — the rapid progress of 
social degeneracy, the failure of all educational agen- 
cies heretofore employed to elevate society, and the 
omnipotent power that we may wield in moral and in- 
dustrial education — there will be no lack of enlightened 
teachers to consecrate their lives to this work and of 
philanthropists to furnish the necessary means. In- 
dividual action must precede the slow movements of 
legislative bodies, and the success of schools must be 
demonstrated before the State will follow the example. 
Let us therefore, to realize the magnitude of the occa- 
sion, review the imperfections and disastrous failures 
of educational systems, in comparison with the demon- 
strated success of a truly liberal education, which seems 
the only hope of humanity to avert the shock of war, 
the horrors of social convulsions to which w T e are tend- 
ing, and the pestilential accumulation of the horrors 
of physical degeneracy — disease, crime, pauperism, sui- 
cide, and insanity. 

The progress of Europe in civilization and liberty 
has been due to the rise of the industrial classes from 
their degraded condition when the sword was the chief 
factor of national destiny. The wicked spirit of the 
Roman empire which honored only the soldier, iden- 
tifying labor with slavery, and made the slave as help- 
less a victim of cruelty as dumb beasts, has pervaded 
Europe, and is not yet extinct. National profligacy 
and brutality are signalized by crushing the toiler and 
the woman because they are weaker, and this brutality 
degrades the nation in proportion as it prevails. The 
United States bid fair to become the leading nation of 
the world, because here woman is honored and the la- 
borer has the political power in his own hands; but the 
laborer cannot sustain himself against the oligarchic 
tendency of society, which lies in the accumulation of 
capital and corporate power or monopoly; nor can 
woman retain her honored position without the indus- 
trial educatio7i which gives independence and social 
power to the laborer and the woman. 

The tendency of the educated civilization of this 
century is steadily toward the degradation of labor and 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 2g$ 

the degradation of maternity — in other words, the degra- 
dation of a majority of the women from whose present 
condition the race takes its departure. Can anything 
but the degradation of the majority be expected from 
a social competitive strife in which a few skilful ener- 
getic families control the wealth of the country, and 
the remainder as competitors for employment or for 
tenantry are at the mercy of employers and landlords? 
In this competitive struggle, Ireland, though less pop- 
ulous than continental Europe, was reduced by heavy 
rent to the verge of general famine in 1879, although 
after losing about three millions by emigration she 
had a superabundance of land and productive power. 

The degradation of labor implies the degradation of 
the majority of the women, leaving them fit only to 
become the mothers of an inferior generation. 

Very few have any conception of the great educa- 
tional crisis which this century has developed. It is 
commonly supposed that our common school and col- 
legiate systems are fully adequate, and need only ex- 
tension and liberal support. Millions are given for 
their extension, but little for their improvement, be- 
cause their great inadequacy is not understood. 

It is supposed that statistics show crime to be chiefly 
prevalent among the illiterate classes, and that the 
abolition of illiteracy will reduce crime to a minimum 
amount. The conclusion of J. P. Wickersham (late 
superintendent of schools in Pennsylvania) from crimi- 
nal statistics was that crime in this country was ten 
times more frequent among the illiterate than among 
those who had common school or higher education. 
But this does not prove the protective power of edu- 
cation at present, and a larger view of the facts leads 
to a different conclusion. 

The criminal statistics show merely a coincidence 
between degradation and illiteracy. But was the il- 
literacy the cause of the moral degradation, or was 
the moral degradation the cause of the illiteracy ? We 
have too many examples of virtuous but illiterate 
rural populations to allow the truth of the former 
theory, and we know that the socially depraved classes 



296 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

are generally indifferent to education and are in con- 
sequence almost uniformly illiterate. We may compel 
them by law to submit to common school education, 
but experience does not justify the belief that the 
amount of criminality will be greatly diminished, for 
the records of the Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsyl- 
vania during twenty-six years exhibit about four times 
as many convicts educated to the extent of reading 
and writing as of those who were entirely illiterate. 
It requires very little observation to ascertain that 
vicious, quarrelsome, lying or thievish boys are not 
usually reformed by common schools. 

A different class of statistics is required for the set- 
tlement of this question — statistics which exhibit the 
increased diffusion of education, and the consequent 
increase or diminution of crime as education is dif- 
fused. The statistics of all civilized countries show 
that education has not yet been able to cope with 
crime and social degeneracy. 

Our large amount of illiteracy (20 to 22 per cent of 
our voting population) is less discouraging in its ten- 
dency to develop crime, than in its tendency to check 
every species of improvement, to impair the founda- 
tions of popular government, and to encourage politi- 
cal corruption and the crimes of demagogues. 

That the morals, the propriety, the political sound- 
ness and the very preservation of our republic demand 
a better education is clear to all who investigate the 
subject; and the trenchant criticisms of Mr. Richard 
Grant White on our present school system, published 
in the New York Times, though very severe, are wor- 
thy of serious .consideration. Speaking of the public 
schools of New York, he says, in the essays from which 
I make extracts: 

"That they exert any wholesome influence upon our society, 
either morally or intellectually, that they make their pupils better 
men and women or better citizens, or that they fit them for the 
duties and the business of their lives, I do not hesitate to deny. 
The proof of the pudding is in the eating; the proof of the value 
of our public school system is in the quality of the young men and 
the young women that it produces. What is their actual worth in 
practical life ? How much better are they morally and intellectually 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS, 2gJ 

than young men and young women who have never been to public 
schools? 

"To this question there will be but one answer from those who 
are qualified to speak upon it, unless my observation and informa- 
tion are both very erroneous, and the answer will be against the 
usefulness of our public schools in fitting their pupils for the duties 
and the business of life. Go into any household, the mistress of 
which has had 20 years' experience of her position, and ask if in 
any employment she may have to offer, whether requiring skill and 
intelligence or mere faithful obedience to orders, she would prefer 
a public- school pupil to one who, although a 'greenhorn,' has 
been well brought up in a respectable but humble family, and you 
will be astonished, if you have not been so astonished before, at 
the quickness and the earnestness of the decision against the product 
of the public school. The young women who, after a few years of 
education at the public expense, seek situations, are (with very rare 
and notable exceptions) entirely unfit for their positions, and not 
only so, but incapable of being fitted for them by constant instruc- 
tion given in the kindest manner. They are ignorant, slovenly, 
heedless, headstrong, self-conceited, disrespectful, and altogether 
unamenable to the discipline of a well-ordered household. Their 
'education' has simply fitted them to read dime novels and cheap 
newspapers, to covet dress altogether unsuited to their position, 
and to go to the theatre or on excursions with a 'young man.' 
Their view of the requirements of their position is that they are to 
do just so much work as will give them the right to demand the 
money that will enable them to compass the aforesaid enjoyments, 
and that they are to do no more. Of notions of duty, of interest 
in their work, of a desire to learn it thoroughly, of docility, of that 
respectful bearing which begets respect, they are as innocent as 
Hottentots or Yahoos. As to their morals, they are generally 
in every respect somewhat inferior to young women who have 
had no public school education, and who can hardly read and can- 
not write. No househeeper of experience desires to take a public 
school pupil into her service in any capacity. 

" Nor are the boys who come from our public schools much more 
admirable products of the system. A small number of them are of 
that human order which is born for intellectual labor, and is im- 
pelled to it by a resistless inward force; some, of course many 
more, are of moderate mental ability, or sober, reserved, and al- 
most timid dispositions, and these profit in a certain degree by 
their education, although it is doubtful whether the benefit resulting 
to themselves or to society justifies the means and the expenditure 
by which it is attained. But as to the large majority of the boys 
who come from our public schools, ask those who employ them. 
Ask the master mechanics, whose memory goes back to a time 
when apprentices came only with the instruction and the training 
received at home, or in a dame-school. The answer, unless I am 
much in error, is sure, to be that, although the public-school boy 
may be a little more glib of tongue, and know superficially a little 



298 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 



about geography and history of which his predecessor was ignorant, 
he is generally inferior in all that makes a good apprentice, a good 
workman, a thrifty, substantial, respectable man. He is less re- 
spectful, less docile, less in earnest about his work, and, on the 
whole, inferior in principle, in faithfulness, and even in manners, 
to the boy who had been taught merely to read and to write, to 
fear God, and to honor his father and his mother. 

" Nor do the records of crime justify the general assumption that 
public schools are a conservative moral force in society. And in- 
deed he must be a heedless observer of human life who regards 
intelligence or any kind or degree of education as a moral safeguard. 
Intelligence and education may teach caution, but they do not inspire 
principle; and not unfrequently natural gifts of mind and acquired 
knowledge are made merely the effective engines and promoters of 
crime. It would be interesting to know what proportion of our 
native criminals have been pupils of our public schools. I have not 
accumulated any statistics upon this subject; but judging by my 
observation, I venture to say that the proportion is very large, so 
large that if it were authentically ascertained the publication of it 
would produce a profound and painful sensation. 

" It is to be remarked, before the further examination of our sub- 
ject, that, beyond question, there is a very considerable number of 
the pupils, in both sexes, of our public schools who do profit by their 
instruction there, and who do become good citizens, estimable men 
and women, and efficient workers in various departments of the 
business of the world. But these, it will be found, are, with com- 
paratively few exceptions, young persons who, if our public school 
system did not exist, would receive in other ways all instruction 
necessary to fit them for their positions in life. 

' 'A very young woman came here from Ireland, and soon obtained 
a place as a nurse in a family where I first saw her. Her mistress, 
who was a woman of unusual intelligence and social culture, trusted 
her entirely, and well she might do so, for the girl was intelligent 
and faithful, well-mannered, pleasant in her person, and as neat as 
a pink about herself and the little ones in her charge. She had 
learned all that she knew at a nuns' school near Dublin. She could 
read and write quite well enough for all her own purposes, as well 
as for those of her employer, and she was a quick and expert 
needle-woman, and was capable of making not only her own 
clothes, but, under the direction of her mistress, anything that a 
child would require. She took an interest in her work, had a pride 
in the children in her care, and performed her duties in no per- 
functory way, but with heartiness and zeal. She was treated with 
the respect and regard which such service merited until she left 
domestic service for married life. She had five children, two boys 
and three girls, who are now between 12 and 20 years of age. 
They all were sent to public school at an early age, and continued 
their attendance for some years. Without an exception they are 
utterly worthless creatures, morally, mentally, and, almost, phys- 
ically. What they learned at school would be of little or no use 






THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 299 

to them in any position in life, so imperfectly was it acquired and 
so unready are they in its use. And this is because of no dulness 
on their part, for they are sharp enough, and quicker-witted, per- 
haps, than their mother, but they are shallow, unstable, and pur- 
poseless — that is, purposeless for any good. For they have one 
purpose to which they adhere with notable tenacity, and that is to 
get as much money and pleasure as they can, and to do no work if 
they can possibly avoid it. Ill-health has diminished the father's 
means and weakened his authority, and to help their mother the 
boys will do nothing. In spite of all that she can do, they spend 
their time in ' loafing ' by day and going to such entertainments as 
are accessible to them by night. They have, indeed, one other nota- 
ble occupation for which, at least, the public school has fitted them. 
They spend much time in reading what are known as dime novels 
and weekly papers of a like sort, such as may be found, with 
illustrations, on most of the news-stands. The eldest positively 
refuses to do any work or to learn any trade, but has announced 
his willingness to accept an appointment on the police force, and 
meantime waits upon Providence. The girls are worthy of their 
brothers. They are flimsy, hysterical creatures, lacking every good 
quality of mind, heart and person which made their mother re- 
spected and liked. They can neither read nor write well, nor can 
they sew. Their idea of happiness seems to be a whirl of excite- 
ment. Of duty they seem to have no notion. Of a desire to learn 
to do anything serviceable, and to do it well, with a pride in their 
work, they are as void as if they were she Chimpanzees. Yet their 
needs are twice those of their mother. She dressed always 
neatly, always becomingly and prettily. They are slovenly, vul- 
gar, and tawdry, and yet the cost of her clothes for a year would 
not dress one of them for a month. She works hard, but they are 
idle. For their mother's sake they have been placed in good situa- 
tions, but in vain. No one 'could do anything with them.' Def- 
erence, respect for authority, subordination, seem entirely foreign 
to their natures. Their only desire seems to be for what they call 
'fun,' and for freedom from all restraint, even that of decency. 
Their mother having been taught by the nuns only to read and 
to write and to sew and to do right and to respect herself and 
others, made an efficient, respectable, lovable woman; they, the 
whole five of them, all public-school scholars, are utterly worth- 
less creatures. 

"Another case is like unto this. It is that of a young woman, of 
perhaps not so fine and delicate a nature as the others, but still a 
good, sensible girl, respected and liked by all who knew her. She 
could read but very little, and with difficulty, and could not write; 
but she could sew. She was, however, so faithful, so efficient, so 
pleasant in her ways, and so thoroughly respectable, that she was 
always able to live in comfort, and she was happy until her chil- 
dren, of which she had three, began to enter their 'teens.' They 
all went to public school, and they all have gone to ruin. The boy 
will do nothing. He will even sit still and not stretch out his fin- 



300 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

ger to help as he sees his mother toil past him with the water with 
which she washes his shirts. He is not twenty years old, this pub- 
lic-school pupil, and he has already been in prison. What need to 
say what the daughters are ? They rival their brother, in so far as 
their sex permits them to do so.. And these children have not even 
the health and strength of their parents. Their mother was a fine, 
healthy, handsome woman. They are flimsy bundles of nervous 
tissue. 

" In both these cases the families were Roman Catholics; but in 
that of a Protestant family known to me the circumstances were 
in all other respects the same, and the issue was the same. The 
stay of the family was a girl who, although she was born here, had 
had only enough of public school to enable her to read a little, 
which was chiefly in her Bible, and to write her name with great 
difficulty. She was put to hard work when she was twelve years 
old, but she, after giving for ten years nearly every dollar that she 
earned to her father, is now almost beloved by the estimable lady 
with whom she lives, who trusts her as Joseph was trusted in the 
house of Potiphar. She would be happy if it were not for her fam- 
ily. Her brother, who has been for years a public-school pupil, is 
a miserable young good-for-naught. He will do nothing; he respects 
nothing; he knows nothing worth the knowing. It is the same sad 
story. 

"Now, are these children made what they are by the public school ? 
Yes, in a certain sense they are. Of course, it need not be said 
that the mere learning of anything that is taught in public 
schools could not have a bad effect. Nothing is taught in those 
schools which is in itself demoralizing. It is the lack of what is 
not obtained at public schools of what cannot be obtained there 
under our present system — discipline, mental, moral, and physical — 
that is one great cause, if not the chief cause, of such deterioration 
as that of which I have given examples. There is no falser, no 
more injurious notion of education than that it consists merely in 
the imparting of the knowledge of certain facts. Conducted as our 
public schools are now, they are merely great force-pumps to force 
knowledge of facts into the minds of boys and girls who do not re- 
tain the knowledge, and to whom it would be of little service, gen- 
erally of none, if it were retained. Of discipline for the life before 
them, of training for any life possible to them, they get none. If 
our public- school system had anything at all of the formative social 
power which is commonly attributed to it, that power would be 
shown in just such cases as those which I have brought forward. 
It was for just such cases that it was designed; it is in just such 
cases that its power is vaunted. Of the pupils who now fill our 
public schools, a very large number are not in need of the elevat- 
ing moral and intellectual influences which are the boast of the 
system. 

" There remains the point that our public-school system fits the 
people for an intelligent discharge of the political functions or du- 
ties peculiar to a democracy. Does any man of sense believe this ? 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 30I 

Could any man who can render a reason believe it in the face of 
the history of the country during the last half century ? If our pub- 
lic-school system can do anything for the benefit of our politics, it 
must certainly and primarily be in the fitting of its pupils to choose 
good men for the making and the administration of our laws. But the 
facts of the case are so flagrantly, so notoriously to the contrary, 
that it is needless to set them forth. It is not necessary for us to 
go back to the times of our fathers, or even for the mature man to 
become, as Horace says, a praiser of the doings of the times when 
he was a boy. We have, all of us who have reached the fulness 
of manhood, seen the steady deterioration of the public service — a 
deterioration equally remarkable in the capabilities, in the morals, 
and in the manners of those who are called into it either by ap- 
pointment or by election, but most particularly by election, which 
should be, and which indeed is, the most trustworthy test of the 
political value of our public-school system. We all remember 
Tweed, and the flock of unclean birds of prey of which he was only 
the uncleanest and the most ravenous. To say anything of the 
criminality of these creatures is now unnecessary; but they were 
not only criminal, they were sordid, vile, and vulgar. They were 
men who, in their tone of mind and in their habits and manners, 
were loathsome to all decent people. They had the gift of making- 
vice more hideous than it is intrinsically. They were no pretended 
philanthropists professing universal benevolence, no brilliant dem- 
agogues setting themselves up as the high-priests of freedom, no 
successful soldiers dazzling the popular eye with military glory; 
they were not even decent, well-mannered, well-educated gentle- 
men, which some rogues have been. They sought their sordid 
ends openly (among themselves and their supporters) by the most 
sordid and vulgar means. And yet w r e have seen miles of the 
streets of New York filled with a procession in which was borne at 
short intervals transparencies with the portrait of this vulgar villain, 
and the legend 'The man we delight to honor.' And yet we nar- 
rowly escaped seeing a bronze statue erected to such a man, who 
was base in all the ways of baseness. Now, the worst of Tweed- 
ism (which is not confined to the city of New York, but pervades 
the State, and, indeed, more or less all the States except two or 
three in New England and at the South) was not Tweed himself, but 
the condition of society which made Tweed possible. That such 
people as he and those of whom he was the chief should come to 
the top in our municipal politics, and that men whom he and his 
like could use should make our State laws and administer them, is 
the greatest reproach that could be brought against the moral and 
political condition of the country. Worse could never have been 
said of any country; anything so bad cannot now be said of any 
country in civilized Christendom. Now, the significant fact in re- 
lation to our subject is that this condition of our society, and par- 
ticularly this condition in respect to politics, has been developed 
pari passu with the development of our public-school system, and 
that it still exists. This, indeed, does not prove that the condition 



302 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS, 

in question is the consequence of the public-school system; but it 
does prove unanswerably that that system is absolutely powerless 
to prevent or to correct such a condition of society." 

Gail Hamilton also speaks as severely as Mr. White 
in reference to the education of girls: 

" In connection with our public schools there is springing up a 
school of ungracefulness and indelicacy, which, to my thinking, 
goes far to neutralize the good wrought by the former. Groups of 
girls travel daily from the country villages three, five, ten miles 
over the steam and horse railroads, to normal and high schools of 
the city, and return at night. What is cause and what is effect I 
do not know; but these girls sometimes conduct themselves so 
rudely as to force upon one the conviction that it would be better 
for women not to know the alphabet, if they must take on so much 
roughness along with it. Typical American girls, pretty, gentle- 
faced, intelligent looking, well dressed, will fill a car with idle, vul- 
gar, boisterous clatter. Out of rosy, delicate lips come the voices 
— of draymen, I was about to say, but that is not true; for the 
voices of these girls are like nothing in the heavens above or the 
earth beneath. The only quality of womanliness they possess is 
weakness. Without depth, richness or force, they are thin, harsh, 
inevitable. They do not so much fill the space as they penetrate 
it. Three or four such girls will gather face to face, and from be- 
ginning to end of their journey pour forth a ceaseless torrent of 
giddy gabble utterly regardless of any other presence than their 
own. They will talk of their teachers and schoolmates by name, 
of their parties and plans, of their studies, their dresses, their most 
personal and private matters, with an extravagance, with an inco- 
herency, with an inelegance and coarseness of phraseology which 
is disgraceful alike to their schools and to their homes. They will 
compel without scruple and bear without flinching the eyes of a 
whole carriage load of passengers. Indeed, the notice of strangers 
seems sometimes to be the inspiration of their noisy, unmelodi- 
ous clatter." 

A New York mother approves Mr. White's criticisms, 
and says: 

" The children of illiterate parents, who can give them no assist- 
ance at home in acquiring their lessons, are not thoroughly taught 
the only branches of knowledge which can enable them to raise 
themselves above the conditions of hard manual labor; and the 
children of educated parents catch, as children will, when the op- 
portunity offers, a thousand corrupt words of expression, a rude- 
ness of manner which it takes a life-time to shake off, and with 
which they gain a very superficial knowledge of the ' higher 
branches ' of a common English course of instruction. I know of 
six children of twelve to fourteen years of age who have been six 



i 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 303 

to seven years at public school. They cannot read the simplest 
sentence well, nor a page without constant stumbling and mistakes. 
They cannot direct or write a letter with anything like neatness or 
correctness, nor set down properly and add up with dispatch a col- 
umn of figures. Of these six children two are girls. They cannot 
sew nor cut out the plainest garment. None of them have the 
health or the strength of their fathers and mothers. What are 
they fitted to do?" 

A correspondent of Mr. White reinforces his views 
as follows: 

"As to college education, is it not admitted that those who 
profit by it most are those who earn the funds to pay for it, and 
that those who learn little save vice and worthlessness are com- 
monly those whose education is paid for by others ? The business 
men of Philadelphia say that the fruit of the free instruction of 
Girard College is to crowd the town with learned drones, boys 
whose acquirements have made them too proud to follow trades, 
yet have not the capacity to do work which needs more intelligence, 
or for whose services in such directions there is no need. A false 
social standard is at the bottom of the difficulty to which you allude 
to-day. The strongest teacher is experience ; and experience soon 
teaches the growing boy that, whatever may be preached or incul- 
cated, the man who gains the most respect from the mass of our 
society is not he who is most pure, brave, unselfish, and wise, but 
he who, by whatever means, raises himself above the need of toil 
for bread. Thus it is the accepted social standard that renders 
him 'sharp and pushing,' and the public-school system simply 
gives him skill. Instead of a highwayman, it makes him a petti- 
fogger; instead of a burglar, a forger; instead of a pickpocket, a 
fraudulent bankrupt. This standard does not place him who, 
whatever his state or calling, distinguishes himself by virtue and 
unselfishness, highest in the social scale ; it places far above him 
the successful swindler, the brazen and skilful thief, the cunning 
hypocrite, the hard and cruel taskmaster, the faithless office-hunter. 
Success in the basest sense is the pass-key to social eminence." 

The College is not responsible for this debased 
standard, but it is responsible for the sentiment which 
discourages honest industry. " The feeling so com- 
mon among college men, that they are too fine-grained 
for business" says the New York Times, " is the silliest 
sentimentalism." 

A New England school trustee responds to Mr, 
White as follows: 

"One great trouble in our schools is that children are not taught 
to think, but to rgpeat. The memory is the faculty cultivated. 



304 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

Facts are of little use to any man if he does not know how to use 
them. We turn out an army of little parrots who soon forget all 
that they have been taught to say. I was trustee of a school, and 
was present at a recitation in geography. The pupil on his legs 
gave us the boundaries of Greece with fluency, and went on to 
describe it as 'a salubrious country.' One of my colleagues 
stopped him by the question, 'What does salubrious mean?' He 
could not answer, and not a boy in the class could help him. The 
teacher tried to explain, but could not mend the matter. 

" I believe that our common-school system, whenever it goes 
beyond the 'three R's,' must necessarily lead to vice and crime, 
because it makes young people who have no chance in life except 
their own exertions look upon manual labor as degrading. In a 
large New England village where I have a foothold it is taken for 
granted that you cannot get any useful work out of a boy or girl 
who has been to public school." 

How very common is this idea that our common 
education is hostile to useful industry. President 
Garfield speaks of the great pleasure he felt, when a 
teacher, in encouraging and assisting 3^oung men to 
obtain a thorough education, and the prejudice of 
their parents, who feared its demoralizing effects. 
One of the fathers to whom he appealed in behalf of 
his son expressed the common sentiment as follows: 

" I don't reckon I can afford to sind him any more. He's got 
eddication enough for a farmer already, and I notice that when 
they git too much they sorter git lazy. Yer eddicated farmers are 
humbugs. Henry's got so far 'long now that he'd rother hev his 
head in a book than be workin*. He don't take no interest in the 
stock nor in the farm improvements. Everybody else is dependent 
in this world on the farmer, and I think that we've got too many 
eddicated fellers setting around now for the farmers to support." 

This protest of the industrial classes has not led 
them to devise a better system which would not pro- 
duce indolence, nor has Mr. White, proposed any 
remedy for the evils which he has painted in dark 
colors with some degree of exaggeration. A New 
York teacher says in reply to Mr. White: 

" Where boys and girls grow up ungoverned and with evil pro- 
pensities, there the parents are to blame, not the schools. There 
is absolutely nothing that can take the place of proper home train- 
ing, so far as concerns morals. Now, in some districts nearly all 
the pupils belong to the tenement-house population, subject to all 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 305 

the evil influences of tenement-house localities. Teachers in the 
schools in such neighborhoods are beset by difficulties, such as Mr. 
White can have no conception of, unless he has spent much time 
in investigating. Fifty per cent of the pupils above ten years of 
age can have their own sweet will about attendance and punctu- 
ality; yet not infrequently teachers of large classes secure one hun- 
dred per cent in attendance and punctuality for weeks together. 
This is a very significant fact, for it is indicative of a teacher's 
great personal influence when such results are obtained in the face 
of such difficulties. In this connection I may add that there is 
nothing more universally conceded among educators than that a 
good teacher, or a good school, is known by the pupils' behavior 
outside of the class-room and of the building. If I had Mr. White's 
private ear I could tell him of case after case where idle, vicious 
pupils were labored with and stimulated to improvement in man- 
ners and morals; of boys, lazy and almost unmanageable at home, 
being imbued with higher motives; of lying ones who have been 
made to feel the manliness of truth; of impudent young scamps 
made respectful and gentlemanly in behavior; of cringing, cowardly 
natures imbued with a manly and womanly self-respect; of teachers 
who have taken pains to counteract the dangerous influences of 
bad reading by lending to the pupils books such as awaken in 
youth a taste for healthful literature; in a word, of good results 
growing out of duty done." 

The moral defects of our school system are not com- 
pensated by intellectual excellence. An able writer in 
the Pen?i Monthly states truly the parrot-like character 
of common education as follows: 

"It is said that a gentleman who fell in with one of our school- 
boys offered him ' a quarter ' if he would tell him the name of all 
the capitals in Europe. It was done, and quickly. 'Now,' said 
the gentleman, ' I will give you another quarter if you will tell me 
whether they are animals or vegetables.' 'Animals,' was the 
ready and confident answer.' The writer says of geography: ' By 
far the greatest part of what is taught under this head in our 
schools is the merest phantasm of knowledge — is rather a deter- 
rent from any further seeking than a help and an impulse to it. 
And the time spent in memorizing the contents of books and 
maps, in every section and class of our public schools, is for the 
most part sheer waste. The student has no more real knowledge, 
after he has completed the course, than when he began. The facts 
that he has learned, though correct enough in themselves, are lies 
by implication, in that they are put forward as a description of 
what they do not describe. They contain no discipline of the 
mind. They only burden the memory; and after spending years 
in learning every speck on a large school atlas, the scholar gen- 
erally spends a few more in getting utterly rid of it. 



306 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

"Alongside these books generally stands an English grammar, 
modelled after some of the worst specimens of Latin grammars. A 
graduate of the university that numbers Lindley Murray among 
her alumni, ought perhaps to deal tenderly with this class of books. 
Their chief fault is their attempt to treat a living language by the 
severely analytic method that is only possible with a dead one. 
They are guilty of linguistic vivisection. The student of their 
wearisome pages will go on talking bad grammar all his life, if he 
have no better or more practical instruction than they give — if he 
be not instructed by the example of persons who speak English 
correctly, or by the study of English literature. 

The New York Sun says of college graduates that it 
is for the want of thorough mastery of anything " that 
so large a share of college-bred men are supernume- 
raries in society. They are unused to manual labor, 
and there is no sort of intellectual labor for which they 
have been specially fitted. They have been taught, 
but they cannot be successful teachers; they have 
learned languages, and have studied logic and rhetoric, 
but they cannot write logically or acceptably. They 
have struggled with the rules of grammar of Latin 
and Greek, and yet they may not be able to speak or 
write English correctly, not to say forcibly or ele- 
gantly." 

Still stronger testimony comes from West Point, 
which was published in the report of the Board of 
Visitors for 1875: 

United States Military Academy, ) 
June 12, 1875. J 

Referring to our conversation this morning, I have 
to say that from my experience in the examination of 
candidates for admission to the Military Academy, I 
am satisfied that there is somewhere a serious defect 
in the system of instruction or in its application in the 
schools of our country for education in the elementary 
branches, particularly in arithmetic, reading and spell- 
ing. I think our candidates are not so thoroughly 
prepared as they were twenty years ago. 

Very respectfully yours, 

A. S. Church, 

Professor, 



, 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. S°7 

Shall we be told by conservatives, in answer to this 
proof of the failure of their educational schemes, with 
all their improvements, their great diffusion, and their 
vast outlay, that it is impracticable to do anything 
better, or that it would be too costly ? Experience 
everywhere proves the practicability of moral and in- 
dustrial education and their actual economy. The 
city of Paris furnishes an ample illustration in its ex- 
perience of industrial schools. 

For industrial education on the apprentice system, 
which costs nothing, being a source of profit, we may 
look at the great printing establishment of MM. Chaix 
& Co. The apprentice pupils, of whom there are 
thirty or forty, during their four years' apprenticeship 
have two hours of daily instruction, and are paid dur- 
ing that time from ten to fifty cents a day in compo- 
sition and from fifteen to ninety cents at presswork — 
thus acquiring literary and industrial education, while 
earning a living and generally entering into the em- 
ployment of the company when their term is finished. 
This is a plan practicable in all large manufactories. 

In the St. Nicholas Institution, which has been in 
operation for fifty years, boys about eleven years of 
age who can read and write are received and taught, 
paying six dollars a month for board and lodging. 
Two hours daily are given to both studies and draw- 
ing, and the rest of the time to work. They receive a 
little pocket-money when well trained, and in three or 
four years leave the school so thoroughly trained as to 
command the highest wages, nearly twice as much as 
ordinary workmen. There are about nine hundred 
pupils in this self-sustaining school. 

The city of Paris spends about twelve thousand 
dollars annually on an industrial school which gives 
gratuitous instruction and also pays the pupils from 
thirty to sixty cents a week, giving them five hours a 
day of both studies, drawing and modelling, and six 
hours of work in wood-turning, pattern-making, car- 
pentry, metal -working and forging. Boys who have 
| completed their primary education enter this school 
at thirteen or fourteen years of age, and after three 



308 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

years are turned out as skilful workmen commanding 
high wages. 

In these and many other schools it is demonstrated 
that industrial education is not only cheap but profit- 
able, and that it permanently elevates the social status 
and prosperity of the pupil. 

Belgium has an excellent training-school for ser- 
vants, " L'Union Nationale des Dames Beiges, " which 
is not only a training-school, but a home for servants 
out of place, and a refuge for the sick, old and infirm. 
It has sixty-eight workshops for industrial education, 
and fifteen technical schools, and numerous colleges, 
besides about a hundred and fifty schools of various 
grades and objects, for horticultural and agricultural 
instruction. 

Paris has opened a new school of horticulture, in 
which free botanical instruction is given, and annual 
exhibitions held. It looks to the culture and acclima- 
tization of all useful plants, shrubs and trees, and the 
study of their products, for which there is a museum. 
The government under its new educational system is 
extending agricultural instruction throughout France. 

One of the grandest triumphs of industrial and 
moral education is that now in progress in Hampton 
College, Virginia, under General Armstrong, in which 
has been shown how to make enlightened and useful 
citizens of the Indians and the black population of 
the South. The system pursued at Hampton College, 
if generously sustained by the government, would put 
an end to Indian wars, and by placing the negro on 
an equal footing of intelligence and worth with the 
white man, bring prosperity and harmony to the 
South. 

Indian education was successful in the Choctaw 
nation long since. According to Rev. S. O. Lee: 

"Twenty years ago almost the whole Choctaw nation could read 
and write their own language. They had a newspaper principally 
printed in Choctaw. They had the New Testament, part of the 
Old Testament, and some forty other publications, including a 
hymn-book, school-books, etc., in their own language. Then 
hundreds of their children and youth of both sexes were in the 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 309 

various boarding-schools getting an education in English, while 
some were constantly in the academies and colleges at the East, 
seeking to add other knowledge to that gained thus at home. 

"The people usually lived in houses ; in fact, in a residence of 
two years, during which I travelled across the country from east to 
west, and from south to north, besides making many shorter trips 
in various directions, I only saw one tepee, or wigwam. They 
had a regularly organized government, with a written constitution 
and laws. One of the first laws passed was one prohibiting in- 
fanticide. 

" Nor was this all. The moral and religious progress was even 
greater. Dr. Cyrus Kingsbury, who founded the Choctaw Mission 
in 1818, and who labored among them more than 50 years, told 
me in 1859 tna * t ^ ie change was wonderful. When he went among 
them there were but two Choctaws known who would not get 
drunk. Their women, as among all savages, were practically 
slaves. They had added to the degradation of heathenism many 
of the vices of the civilized life. I lived among them from 1859 to 
1861, and did not see as much drunkenness among them as one 
will see in one of our villages in two months. The importation of 
intoxicating liquors was prohibited under penalty of fine, as well 
as the destruction of the liquor. This law was quite strictly en- 
forced." 

Industrial added to moral education solves the great 
national problem of making every man an enlightened 
and orderly citizen, while enabling those who aspire 
to lead in patriotic and scientific careers to carry them- 
selves onward from the humblest position by working 
and paying their way. " It need be no discourage- 
ment," said President Garfield in a letter to a friend in 
1857, " that you are obliged to hew your own way and 
pay your own charges. You can go to school two 
terms of every year and pay your own way. I know 
this, for I did so when teachers' wages were much 
lower than they are now. It is a great truth that 
where there is a will, there is a way." 

But the majority of poor students are not so fortu- 
nate as to find a school to teach just when they need 
it, unless their services are utilized with their juniors 
in the school they attend. If, however, they spend 
four hours a day in labor, which is equal to three days 
of eight hours per week, such labor at ten cents per 
hour would meet their daily expenses, for a dollar 
and half per week will furnish all the food of nourish- 



3IO THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

ing and wholesome quality which a man should con- 
sume. 

It is true that our State prisons are so horribly mis- 
managed as to make it appear that the labor of a con- 
vict does not pay the expense of keeping and boarding 
him. Convicts besides the expense of guarding them 
are of less value than free honest laborers, but in the 
workhouse prison of Claremont, Allegheny county, 
Pa., under the enlightened management of Henry 
Cordier, 2385 prisoners were confined in 1875, the 
majority being for thirty days or less, for disorderly 
conduct, drunkenness, vagrancy, larceny, assault, rob- 
bery, and burglary, and the labor of these prisoners 
produced over seventy-six thousand dollars, while the 
entire expenditures and salaries cost less than fifty- 
eight thousand dollars. The health and morals of the 
prisoners were so improved that the death-rate was 
astonishingly low, less than two in the thousand, the 
habits and character of all were improved, the library 
was freely used, the school willingly attended, and the 
industry of some so great as to make a handsome sum 
for themselves by overwork. 

The strength and prosperity of life consists in work. 
It is both an absurdity and an outrage on youth to de- 
prive them of education in their chief faculty, their 
chief duty, their chief hope, the basis of their moral 
and physical health, and the means whereby the poor 
boy and girl might pay their way, and secure an educa- 
tion without a parent or a patron. In a proper educa- 
tional system every worthy boy, every poor orphan, 
would find an open pathway to the highest rewards of 
talent, industry and virtue, and the nation's wealth of 
undeveloped mind would all be brought into service. 
We should say of our poor youth as Cornelia said of 
her sons: " These are my jewels." 

But it is vain to urge any system of education if we 
are simply raising young men to be "food for gun- 
powder," and simply increasing wealth that it may 
furnish a basis for war debts. The crisis has arrived 
when we must choose between industrial education, 
peace and prosperity on the one hand, or on the other 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 311 

the robbery, arson and homicide of war which has al- 
ready gone to an unbearable extent and threatens if 
continued to bankrupt all European nations. The war 
debts of Europe have nearly trebled since 1848, and have 
about doubled in the last twenty years. The world's 
salvation depends upon the triumph of industrialism 
over its implacable foe, militarism.* 

The difficulty in our educational system is not 
reached by criticisms on teachers and pupils, on scio- 
lism and lack of morals and manners. It is a funda- 
mental difficulty, pervading the whole educational sys- 
tem — it is a matter of undevelopment, of ignorance, 
and misconception of what education is and should 
be. The misconception pervades all society, all classes. 
Education is supposed to be a process for acquiring 
knowledge and strengthening the intellectual faculties, 
with some incidental improvement of character, but 
omits matters far more important than it compre- 
hends. 

It fails to realize intellectual development as it 
should, and this remark is applicable to the very best 
examples of teaching furnished by colleges and schools. 
In no institution of which I have any knowledge is the 
intellect cultivated completely without giving a Chi- 
nese predominance to memory f over the faculties that 
pursue and acquire truth. Nowhere is the power of 
reason so cultivated as to enable the pupil to discard 
prejudice and weigh the force of evidence against his 
own cherished opinions or those of his teachers. The 
most honored college graduate will ignore and toss 
aside, with puerile insolence, arguments and facts 
which, if heeded, might compel him to change his 
opinions. With all his mental discipline he is often 

* So intense is this antagonism, that about thirty years ago the 
officers of the United States ship St. Lawrence, were ostracized 
from a London military club, because that ship brought over the 
American contribution to the World's Fair ! 

f " Not more than one teacher in a hundred," said the New York 
School Journal, " attempts to do anything but listen to recitations 
and impose penalties and punishments when the recitations are 
imperfectly given." 



312 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

inferior in the candid pursuit of truth to many of the 
uneducated classes, and the same remark is true of the 
majority of his professors. They have not taught him 
to follow the supreme guidance of reason, for they are 
not accustomed to following it themselves. The en- 
tire mass of mankind, professors, authors, and all, are, 
with few exceptions, creatures of habit, resting for life 
in opinions not formed by reason, but taken in by ab' 
sorption, as plants absorb their sap from the rains that 
fall in their vicinity. The folly of the French Acad- 
emy in rejecting Harvey's discovery of the circulation of 
the blood was due to this cause, and it is in perhaps as 
vigorous operation to-day as ever, producing the ha- 
bitual rejection of whatever does not suit the prejudices 
of scientists, journalists, and authors. They see the 
folly of their predecessors and not their own. The 
art of reasoning to discover truth has never been taught 
in any college or practised by any faculty, and there 
never yet has been a period in civilization sufficiently 
advanced to tolerate kindly the pursuit of truth by 
fearless and elevated reason, for the world has always 
been so full of the errors of ignorance, undevelopment, 
bigotry, and selfishness, as to give a hostile reception 
to every such reasoner. 

Of all the literary stultifications and pedantic waste 
of time for which we are indebted to the Dark Ages, 
the teaching of Aristotelian logic in colleges as if it 
conveyed the art of reasoning was the supremest folly. 
The syllogism was simply an interpretation or appli- 
cation of a general statement. It had not the power 
of reason to detect a falsehood, to prove a truth, or to 
originate a new discovery. The art of reasoning has 
never been understood (except empirically as it was in- 
stinctively used), and the nearest approach to its ex- 
position, that of J. Stuart Mill, leaves much to be added ; 
but the exposition of this subject, out of place here, 
belongs to my work on philosophy and philosophers. 
As our education has failed to develop the supreme 
intellectual faculty of reason, and to a very great ex- 
tent has repressed or paralyzed it, so has it failed to 
develop the leading faculty, the pioneer faculty of 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 313 

human progress, the power of invention or develop- 
ment of something new. The pre-eminent importance 
of this faculty in science and art as the organizer of 
civilization and prosperity should have secured for it 
some attention and cultivation in our educational sys- 
tem, but all that can be said is that we do not repress 
it quite as thoroughly as the Chinese repress all the 
higher intellect. When these faculties shall be culti- 
vated, filling the world with philosophers and invent- 
ors, the march of intelligence and prosperity will be 
rapid and wonderful. 

Up to the present time the general tendency of our 
so-called highest education has been not only to leave 
undeveloped the master faculties of reason and inven- 
tion, which give to mankind their guiding wisdom and 
creative power, but to encase men in a shell which 
excludes the reception of truth and places the entire 
mass of. humanity — College, Church, Government and 
all — at war with the Philosopher, the Inspired Saint, 
and the Inventor, for they are not inside of the bound- 
ing collegiate and authoritative encasement. They are 
emphatically outsiders to society — beyond the pale — be- 
yond sympathy, respect or recognition, and until with- 
in one or two centuries they were martyred like Huss 
and Savonarola, like Bruno and Servetus, like De 
Caux and Pepin, and since the martyr period they 
are simply ignored, Boycotted or starved. The mass 
of the medical profession is a Boycotting organization 
against any higher wisdom which trespasses upon the 
limits of a creed and invites the stolid into new fields 
of thought. 

Society generally — the literati and scientists gener- 
ally — with a few grand and starlike exceptions, are 
blind as bats when the sunlight of genius from some 
new quarter strikes their dazed vision, and hence, as 
a general rule, our greatest authors have encountered 
saddening difficulties in obtaining any recognition or 
even finding a book-seller who will publish for them 
until a few genial and appreciative souls have given 
them a kindly welcome, and led the multitude in the 
right path — a blind multitude that ignores genius 



3H THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. . 

without a prior fame, and accepts all trash that is con- 
secrated by authority. Polidori's story of a Vampyre, 
when published in the name of Byron, was even more 
popular than the poet's own writings in France until 
it was disowned by Byron, and the antiquated rub- 
bish of Aristotle is not yet consigned to oblivion. 
Carlyle and Hugo could find no book-sellers to issue 
their first works. " Sartor Resartus" had to wait seven 
years and then creep out through a magazine. Milton, 
Carlyle, Hugo, Brougham, Macaulay, Jeffrey, and 
scores of others could testify as to the reception of a 
great author's first works. Galileo, Kepler, Harvey, 
Gal van i, Columbus, Swedenborg, Gall, Fourier and 
Priestley could testify as to the chronic stupidity of 
the educated classes to whom they appealed with so 
little success, and their successors to-day can bear the 
same testimony. 

Four fifths of the true purposes of education are 
ignored. We neither make manly men and competent 
women by physical training (with a few exceptions), 
nor do we teach them how to maintain health and 
longevity, nor how to attain the great practical aim of 
life — independence by useful industry — nor how to live 
so as to attain the highest aim of happiness and per- 
fection of character in the present life and its eternal 
continuation. 

We do not develop the capacity and the desire for 
the pursuit and acquisition of valuable knowledge, 
which if developed would compensate for the failures 
of schools and insure the future intellectual progress 
of the pupil. On the contrary the pupil commonly 
leaves his task-work with a profound indifference to 
growth in knowledge if not a positive aversion to 
study; and hence libraries generally fail if they rely 
on popular support, or if they keep alive they do it by 
excluding useful knowledge and furnishing trashy fic- 
tion. 

The Chicago Advance, speaking of a circulating 
library, says: "There were three thousand volumes in 
the library, and they were all fiction. Not a sign of 
anything else ! ' A book of any other character would 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 3 1 5 

be so much dead loss/ was the remark of the librarian. 
1 I must buy the books that people read or I could 
not live.' * The sillier a story is the more eagerly it 
is caught up and read.' 'Are your customers mostly 
young people?' * No, there are as many middle-aged 
and old men and women as there are young people, 
and the silliest novels are as eagerly read by the old 
as by the young.' The vast amount of this mental 
imbecility which can be stirred by nothing but fiction 
is due to our educational systems/' 

We do not by education supply the State with steady 
producers of wealth, and honorable enlightened citi- 
zens, but leave to accident the development of the 
mighty army of paupers, tramps, swindlers, robbers, 
peculators, public plunderers, assassins, drunkards, 
lunatics, imbeciles, and the scrofulous, consumptive, 
short-lived wretches whose existence has been a bur- 
den to themselves and others. Our system of educa- 
tion rather increases than diminishes these evils by 
leading the pupils away from efficient industry which 
is the tendency everywhere. A prominent French citi- 
zen, M. Salicer, says in an able educational work, speak- 
ing of the distaste for work developed in the elemen- 
tary schools: " These little bureaucrats come to the end 
of their school course with but one fear before them 
— that of being forced to become workmen and work- 
women; and with but one wish — the boys to become 
clerks, the girls shop-women. Hence this undefined, 
uncertain, overstocked class of book-keepers, cashiers, 
salesmen, clerks, agents, scorning cap and blouse, and 
the corresponding class, still more to be pitied, of young 
ladies of no shop, perhaps with the coveted attire, but, 
alas, how procured !" 

The burdensome and the dangerous classes to whom 
the feeble sympathies of Christendom scarcely reach, 
increase with the increase of population, and burden 
us with the tax of hospitals, jails, and the costly 
machinery of courts, sheriffs and police, without pro- 
ducing security, for no one knows- when he may be 
robbed, or murdered, or swindled, if not continually on 
his guard. Nor is there any end to public peculation 



3l6 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

and the continual perversion of legislation How little 
'influence our common schools exert is illustrated by 
the fact that of 17,341 arrests by the police of New 
York city in 1882 (October, November and December), 
twenty-nine-thirtieths were able to read and write. 
We cannot afford to continue this miserable system, 
when the remedy is so accessible and cheap, when 
we see by the teaching of experience and reason that 
moral and industrial education can give us a prosper- 
ous, peaceful, harmonious and enlightened nation, in 
which the eye shall no longer be offended and the soul 
sickened by the sight of human degradation. 

But common-school, high-school and collegiate edu- 
cation such as we have had will not answer the pur- 
pose, for much of our education has been positively de- 
moralizing. 

" The very fact," says Prof. Niles, ' ' that most students regard the 
termination of their literary course as a release from an irksome 
bondage, shows conclusively that there is some radical defect in the 
government. The professor too often exhibits all the austerity of 
the judge unmingled with the tenderness of an affectionate guardian. 
And how often is the recitation-room witness to the peevish fretful- 
ness of the patience-tried pedagogue." 

4 'In almost all our public seminaries the officers and students 
form two distinct parties. If obedience be rendered at all, servile 
fear is the motive. Consequently no moral turpitude is associated 
in the student's mind with the commission of vice, provided a col- 
lege law is securely violated. The moorings of conscience are 
sundered, and the impetuous tide has thus swept many a youth 
of promise and hope into irrevocable ruin. Those who have any 
experience in managing the affairs of a public seminary will bear 
testimony that we have not exaggerated." 

This system, against which scholars rebel, is not at- 
tractive to the lowest classes who most need elevation, 
and when forced into it they are not much elevated. 
Miss Rhine, speaking of the failure of the Evening 
High School in New York, makes a clear exposition of 
the subject and of the reform that is needed: 

" A reason for this failure may be found in the course of study, 
which has not been sufficiently practical to advance the interests of 
those for whom the school was designed. 

11 A review of the curriculum of the Evening High School shows 
that the most useful study taught is that of book-keeping. Also that 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. ^l 1 / 

this branch has from first to last been most extensively patronized. 
In the statistics for 1878 it is seen that out of an average of 1600 
pupils, 354 were students of book-keeping, 297 were in the arith- 
metic classes, and 205 studied penmanship. These together make 
an aggregate of more than half the registered scholars. This striv- 
ing after gentility influences many boys and girls with parents em- 
ployed in the useful handicrafts to endeavor to raise themselves 
above their class by seeking for positions at desks or behind count- 
ers. The result is that the supply is now so far in excess of the 
demand that it has been calculated there are on an average over 
three hundred aspirants waiting for every vacant clerkship. A 
New York merchant advertised a short time ago for a book-keeper. 
A hundred applications were made in less than twenty-four hours. 

" In this respect the experience of New York is that of other large 
cities. Complaints from the same cause come from the commercial 
centres of Germany and England. France, whose educational facili- 
ties at present perhaps outrank the world, protests against this 
overcrowding in the mercantile walks of life. 

"Americans, hitherto proud of their free-school system, are also 
now asking whether an education producing this result of over- 
crowding one or two channels of trade is the best that can be de- 
vised, and whether the scholastic branches have proved failures or. 
successes. 

14 To these questions, statistics of crime and education have given 
an answer. ' The history of crime,' said the late Samuel Royce, a 
keen investigator, ' is but the history of our education.' Prof. John 
W. Draper, in a work upon physiology, asserts that our common 
education has a tendency rather the reverse of restraining crime. 
Herbert Spencer, Ruskin, Huxley, and others of the world's great 
thinkers take the same position. 

44 Not satisfied with mere assertions, Mr. Richard Vaux, of Penn- 
sylvania, gathered an exhaustive array of statistical facts to prove 
the relativity of crime and idleness to education. Through these 
he shows conclusively that a certain amount, or rather an uncertain 
amount, of learning, unless supplemented by a knowledge of some- 
thing useful to the world, augments, instead of decreases, crime. In 
support of this statement he gives the following figures, covering 
an interval of twenty-six years. These facts were gathered in person 
from the records of the convicts of the Eastern State Penitentiary 
of Pennsylvania. 

Years. Received. Illiterate. Could read and write. 

No. Per cent. No. Per cent. 

1850-59 1,605 243 15.14 1,115 60.47 

1860-69 , 2,383 410 17.21 1,677 7°-37 

1870-76 1,650 361 21.88 1,235 74.85 

44 From these figures it can be seen that the educated convicts 
were four times as numerous as the illiterate. Nor is this an iso- 
lated case, facts of a similar kind having been compiled by others 
in various places, giving a like result. 



3l8 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

11 From these investigations the conclusion has been reached that 
the greatest preventive of crime would be industrial education. Mr. 
Vaux, whose position for many years as President of the Board of 
Inspectors of the Penitentiary of Pennsylvania gave him informa- 
tion not easily accessible to others, recommended in his reports the 
* absolute imperative necessity for engrafting in the present school 
system practical trade knowledge.' In support of this statement he 
gives the following statistics, to show how much less the per cent 
is of apprenticed to unapprenticed criminals : 

Years. Received. Unafifir enticed. Apprenticed. 

No. Per cent. No. Per cent. 

1850-59 1,217 839 75.42 378 24.18 

1860-69 1,950 1,617 81.83 333 18.17 

1870-76 i>4-63 , 15276 88.66 187 11.30 

" These facts show that the object of all schools — and particularly 
night-schools, which ought to be essentially the people's schools — 
should be to teach mechanical branches : to teach the struggling, 
the unemployed, and the incompetent, not how to construe Latin, 
but how to earn a living. Skilled labor is the preventive of crime. 

" Nor is this scheme of industrial education a new scheme, as many 
opponents have urged. As early as 1793-1803 Berlin had nine in- 
dustrial schools ; three are to-day in successful operation. Austria, 
in 1872, had over 9000 such institutions, two of which were for the 
purpose of teaching blacksmithing. 

11 Book learning, it has been found, does not mean food, shelter 
and independence. Whatever does not bring these leads to crime. 

" Money should be no consideration, for the means expended in 
making self-supporting citizens returns again tenfold to the people; 
while what is expended in making men scholars of no trade must 
be further supplemented by giving means for prisons, poor-houses, 
and other eleemosynary institutions. How much is paid for these 
latter may be gleaned from the reports of the State Charities Aid 
Association for 1879, which gives as the disbursements for that 
year the enormous sum of $26,000,000. 

"Among the recipients of these charities, we are told, were crowds 
of able-bodied men, individuals who should have been at work at 
self-supporting industries, but who were incompetent through igno- 
rance. If the object of education be to remove the causes of such 
shameful expenditures, and it can be accomplished by industrial 
schools, the teaching will be cheap to the nation at any cost. 

" When the object of tuition in night-schools shall be practical 
industrial teaching, when the sound of the carpenters' hammers, 
chisels and saws shall be heard, along with the noise of printing 
presses and the hum of the other manifold industries produced by 
civilization, it will be seen that such institutions will have charms 
to gather together that population which now prefers, rather than 
the dull routine of the schools, to roam the streets, acquiring those 
dissolute habits which eventually lead to prisons and other State 
asylums supported at enormous expense to the people." 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS, 319 

Similar ideas have been illustrated and enforced in 
the criticisms of R. G. White : 

" Handicraft seems to be falling into neglect. The number of 
artisans who thoroughly understand their craft and take a pride in 
doing good work seems to be diminishing at a rate which is per- 
ceptible from one five years' end to another. Indeed, it is almost 
notorious among all those who have occasion from time to time to 
employ skilled labor, that if they need the services of, let us say, a 
carpenter, a watch-maker, a painter, or a cabinet-maker, they cannot 
be sure, without some troublesome inquiry, that the work will be 
done in a workmanlike manner. This uncertainty has no reference 
to that skill and taste which are the personal attributes of the in- 
dividual workman, and give one man a reputation which another 
can never attain, but to that knowledge and skill, at once element- 
ary and complete, which is possessed by every artisan who has 
'learned his trade.' I am sure that the experience of most readers 
of the Times will sustain the assertion that, except in shops where 
the highest standard is maintained and prices are really exorbitant, 
there is no certainty that work will not be 'botched ' and ' scamped,' 
and sent home with a surface finish which conceals bad workman- 
ship; that men will come to a house pretending to be skilled work- 
men in wood or in metal, such, indeed, being their professed voca- 
tion, and do their work so ignorantly and unskilfully that they in- 
jure and even almost destroy the articles committed to their hands. 
Against such wrong as this we have in this country practically no 
remedy. We must not only submit to such damage, but pay for 
having it done, for success in legal resistance is hopeless. 

" This lack on the part of artisans of a thorough knowledge of 
their craft corresponds, it will be seen, to that lack of thoroughness 
in our elementary education which experience and investigation 
have brought to light. The defect is not peculiar to this country, 
although it is much greater here than elsewhere, and it has various 
causes which are operating all over the world, but nowhere with an 
effect so great and so deplorable as here. The fact is as indispu- 
table as the other fact, that now most children of 14 or 15 years of 
age cannot read well or write well or practise readily the common 
rules of arithmetic, and in both cases the cause is the same — defec- 
tive education ; or, rather, the lack of any training which may be 
properly called education. 

"It is inevitable that apprenticeship, so far as it is a thorough 
training for the practice of any craft, will ere long practically dis- 
appear. There are in this country now hardly any apprentices 
properly so called ; and we are, therefore, as to the future, deprived 
of the means by which skilled artisans have been made in the past. 

et What is to be done in this emergency ? Some remedy must be 
found ; and, of course, a remedy will ultimately be found ; but the 
problem is a difficult one, and it is not improbable that trouble may 
come in its solution. It would seem that a government (that is, 
with us, a people) that could undertake the task not only of edu- 



320 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

eating all of its citizens, but of compelling them to receive educa- 
tion, might find in the social and political necessities of this case a 
justification for supplying the means of instruction in the various 
arts and crafts which are suffering, and which seem destined to 
suffer more hereafter, from the disuse of apprenticeship." 

Private benevolence is doing what governments 
neglect. The Lord Industrial School, 135 Greenwich 
Street, New York ; the Women's Educational and In- 
dustrial Society, 47 East Tenth Street, New York ; the 
Free School of Industrial Art, lately established at 31 
Union Square ; the Wilson Mission House or school, 
in St. Mark's Place, near Avenue A, for industrial in- 
struction, show that the " will " of the benevolent will 
"find -a way" to remedy the defects of an antiquated 
system of education. 

One of the most judicious and practical institutions 
is the " Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial 
Science," at Worcester, Mass., intended to combine 
school-work and manual labor. The graduates of this 
institution will be qualified for taking positions in 
manufactories, for taking the direction of architecture 
and engineering, and for teaching any department of 
industrial science. The theses of the graduates are 
devoted entirely to mechanical subjects. 

Experience in manual labor schools in the United 
States has long since demonstrated that by combining 
work and study we may reduce the expenses of educa- 
tion at least one half — improve the health, energy and 
cheerfulness of the pupil, increase his efficiency in 
study, prepare him better for active life, and do much 
to diminish the separation or alienation between the 
rich and poor. Such were the conclusions reached by 
a committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature after care- 
ful investigation. Not less than fifty eminent teachers 
and writers on education from the time of Milton and 
Locke to the college presidents and professors of to- 
day have urged the importance of uniting labor and 
study. 

Industrial education would at once change the social 
condition, by enabling artisans through better wages 
to attain greater independence, by diminishing the 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 321 

amount of ignorant, pauperized labor, which is crush- 
ing itself in competition for employment, and by in- 
creasing the number of employers; finally by enabling 
woman to sustain herself in this competitive struggle. 

The demand for ethical, industrial, and physiolog- 
ical education is, with all our progress, still the great 
demand of humanity — a demand as urgent as the de- 
mand for fresh air with the victims dying in the famous 
Black Hole of Calcutta — for millions are hurrying on 
in every nation to degeneration, misery, and death. 

Our modern educational systems, greatly improved 
as they are, are signal and dismal failures, having ut- 
terly failed to check the barbarian impulse of war, 
failed to control intemperance, failed to develop 
manhood and health, failed to develop the reasoning- 
faculties, and failed to evolve any system of society 
not rotten with pauperism and crime. 

Of all the dismal facts which a pessimistic philoso- 
pher might plausibly array to prove the impossibility 
of the ultimate elevation of society, and to show the 
absence of divine benevolence, there are none more 
gloomy, disheartening and terrible than the fact that 
society has been steadily degenerating, in spite of the 
vast amounts expended in education, in spite of the 
improvement which has been going on for fifty years 
in the philosophy, the principles and methods of edu- 
cation; in spite of the vast multiplication of schools 
and colleges, and the diffusion of free tuition, which 
has everywhere reduced the number of the illiterate, 
and bids fair in another half century to give the ele- 
ments of education to every individual in civilized na- 
tions; in spite of all this, the degeneration of society 
in happiness, in virtue, in health, in physical and men- 
tal capacity — in everything which renders life worth 
living — has been going on singularly parallel with the 
improved systems of education — so closely parallel 
that a cynical observer might argue that education 
itself was dragging humanity down to a lower exist- 
ence than that of the skin-clad barbarians of old. 
Such a conclusion would not be true, but it certainly 
is true that much of our education produces physical 



322 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

degeneracy, and that the entire system, in a world-wide 
view, has utterly failed to prevent both physical and 
moral degeneracy. 

If our education, directed solely to the literary-intel- 
lectual capacities, and not to the practical-intellectual, 
nor to the virtues or the energies, has any elevating 
and redeeming power,* it has not been able to show it 
clearly in competition with the overwhelming degra- 
dation-power which arises from crowded population, 
monopoly, taxation, competition among the poor, iso- 
lation of classes, accumulation of all wealth in a few 
hands, and consequently intensified poverty, privation, 
filth, and malaria, which would result in wide-spread 
famine and pestilence if these debasing agencies were 
not counteracted by the diminishing fecundity and 
rapid mortality of the lower classes. 

The debasing agencies which act upon the majority 
of society in Europe, and which, as population accumu- 
lates, are beginning to act in the United States, must 
affect the entire community* A remarkable illustration 
of this is seen in the fact, recently published in the 
British Medical Journal, that the size of the head has 
been diminishing in England and Scotland during the 
last 25 years, according to the testimony of hatters, 

* What elevating or redeeming power could be found in the 
contest between pedagogic tyranny and obstreperous animality 
which teachers have so often described ? An old number of the 
Annals of Education, published at Boston, contains the following 
illustration of the moral status of American schools: " Is any out- 
rage committed on the regular constituted authority of the institu- 
tion, any palpable violation of its statutory laws, and do the faculty 
take the proper measures to repel the mischief and inflict deserved 
punishment on the offenders ? The spirit of wild misrule at once 
breaks forth; all regard to decency seems obliterated; college prop- 
erty is wantonly destroyed, and acts of violence are perpetrated 
with the license of a city mob; the persons of instructors who have 
become gray in the wasting labors of their station, who have spared 
no effort for the literary and moral welfare of these thoughtless and 
ungrateful pupils, are grossly insulted, and even the majesty of 
Heaven impiously dared by the sacrilegious exhibition of demoniac 
passion in the place consecrated for evening and morning worship. 
All this occurs in our seminaries for liberal education." This de- 
scription of schools forty years ago is not yet entirely out of date. 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. Z 2 Z 

who say that a large hat is rarely called for now, and 
that there is a decline of two sizes in the average sup- 
ply; the largest heretofore, according to hatters, have 
been those of Scotland and northern England, which 
corresponded to the superior mental vigor of the 
Scotch. In the middle region, hatters made larger 
hats for the northern than the southern market. A 
general decline of brain development is one of the 
surest indications of national degeneracy. But we have 
every other indication of this degeneracy — especially 
that most fatal of all degeneracy, in virtue and happi- 
ness. 

As the ravages of intemperance may be measured 
by the deaths it causes, so may our social and moral 
degeneracy be measured by the growth of suicide and 
insanity. The latest reports indicate the continuous 
progress of degeneracy in Europe, other great cities 
approximating the gloomy condition of Paris as to 
suicides. Between 1875 and 1878 Paris had 400 annual 
suicides to the million of inhabitants; but Vienna had 
285; Berlin, 280; and Leipzig, 450. The total of suicides 
in France has risen from an annual average of 3639, 
between 185 1 and 1855, to 6496 in recent years. 

Insanity in France far exceeds suicide. The esti- 
mate of lunacy in 1881 is at the rate of one lunatic for 
400 inhabitants, or 2500 to the million. This devel- 
opment occurs chiefly just where modern education 
reaches its maximum power in the stimulation of in- 
tellect and selfish soft-handed ambition, unacquainted 
with productive industry, keen in its sensibilities, and 
strong in its ungratified senses. Artists and lawyers 
furnish ten times as many lunatics in proportion to 
numbers as those who are occupied in the honest toils 
of agriculture. 

The world has to-day about a million teachers, of 
which recent statistics give the United States 271,144. 
We have about 360 colleges and universities (exclusive 
of female institutions), of which 332 have been estab- 
lished in the last sixty years. Collegiate institutions 
have increased fourteenfold, while population has in- 
creased fivefold. 



324 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

The annual income of American colleges for the last 
few years exceeds two and a half millions of dollars, 
which ought to have been the most effective and bene- 
ficial of all educational expenditures, by giving us an 
army of original thinkers and social leaders, but is 
perhaps the most costly and least profitable of all edu- 
cational undertakings — vastly better, however, than 
those magnificent failures of an effete system, the uni- 
versities of Oxford and Cambridge, which enjoyed an 
income of $3,770,000 in 187 1. Such costly failures are 
not to be expected in America, but if we look for the 
valuable results of our grand collegiate endowments, 
we shall look in vain for any great elevation of the 
moral impulses of humanity, any great development of 
original thought, any signal emancipation from the 
stereotyped ignorance and prejudices transmitted from 
the first half of the century, any elevation of science 
from the deep, dark, and narrow gorge of materialism, 
in which it has been flowing, or any wide opening 
of the doors of the temple of knowledge to the thou- 
sands of poor aspiring youth for whom their endow- 
ments are ample. Columbia College, with property 
amounting to $4,763,000, Harvard with $3,615,000, 
Johns Hopkins with $3,000,000, will never under the 
present collegiate policy exhibit any adequate returns 
for their investments. The first demand of an Amer- 
ican educational corporation (unlike the German) is 
for a fine building, to which all other objects must be 
sacrificed, and in the entire programme of education 
utility is sacrified to ostentation and reason to memory. 
Institutions which should diminish our social inequal- 
ities by assisting the aspirations of the lowly, increase 
the disparity and alienation of classes by educating 
the higher class in aspirations associated with a scorn 
of manual labor. 

New York spends more than four times as much 
per capita in education in 1880 as she did in 1850. 
The population of 3,097,394 in 1850 has increased two 
thirds in thirty years, being, in 1880, 5,083,173, but the 
public expenditure on education has increased from 
$1,600,000 to $10,290,000; and her investment for col- 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 325 

legiate education amounts to $14,794,000. Yet New 
York is no happier than she was thirty years ago. 

Five States — New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, Illinois, 
and Maryland — have an aggregate collegiate endow- 
ment of thirty-three and three fourths millions of dol- 
lars, but if it were three hundred millions it would not 
under existing educational systems be a redeeming 
and elevating power, though it might add greatly to 
the literary polish of society, to the cultivation of the 
exact physical sciences, to the ambitious desire of au- 
thorship, and to the aversion from simple industrial 
pursuits; but these are not forces that make the world 
much better or happier. 

The statistics arrayed by Mr. Royce, in his work 
on Race Deterioration, have placed the alarming fact 
beyond a doubt that a deterioration of the race has 
been in progress. Such a deterioration has often been 
noticed by physicians, and I shall freely use the statis- 
tics of Mr. Royce, though I have not had time to verify 
their accuracy. 

Let us first observe the immense progress in educa- 
tion during the last fifty years, and then look at the 
social condition of man, to see whether it has been 
improved or debased at the same time. 

The United States had no common-school system 
at the beginning of the century, but have now about 
$200,000,000 invested in common-school property, and 
spend about a hundred millions annually for the ser- 
vices of teachers. 

England in 1841, while spending three and a quarter 
millions in the suppression of crime, gave only $50,000 
from Parliament for primary education. In 1872 the 
Parliamentary appropriation was $7,757,800. Church 
expenditures also have increased. The incomes of 
the clergy of the established church were in 1850 
$16,250,000, were in 1880 twenty-two and three quar- 
ter millions, and during that time $16,000,000 were 
expended in erecting parsonages. 

France had a million scholars under primary instruc- 
tion in 1830; in 1868, 4,442,421. In 1828, about 35 per 
cent of the soldiers of her army could read; in i86o g 



326 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

70 per cent. The French government in 1828 gave but 
50,000 francs for the people's education. In 1873 Paris 
alone gave 11,132,046 francs. The rapidity of French 
progress is shown by the fact that there were in France 
less than two thousand school libraries in 1862, but in 
1866 there were 10,243. Belgium advanced with equal 
rapidity, having, in 1830, 293,000 children in primary 
schools, and in 1848, 462,000. 

Germany, with about 2000 university professors and 
20,000 university students, is the most highly educated 
country of Europe, and the proportion of illiterates 
in the army recruits was in 1878 but 2.5 per cent. 

If the education thus rapidly increased had been 
a real education, a development of soul and body, we 
should expect an improvement of morals, a diminu- 
tion of crime, a diminution of insanity, idiocy, and 
suicide, a diminution of vagrancy and pauperism, a 
diminution of mortality, an increase of longevity, 
and an immense diminution of poverty. Alas ! alas ! 
nearly all statistical records seem to agree in the 
alarming fact that during all this development of edu- 
cation the misery and degradation of human beings 
has not been alleviated, but terribly aggravated. Ed- 
ucated society is more wretched than its ancestors, 
simply because there is little or nothing in the educa- 
tional systems to make men better, stronger, healthier, 
or wiser, and much to impair the health of the body, 
the vigor and independence of the mind, and the 
power of the moral faculties. The government of 
France recently appointed a committee to look into 
the various effects of schools upon the sense of vision 
in their pupils, but it would have been wiser to extend 
the investigation into much greater evils — the general 
impairment of physical health, the loss of practical 
energy and usefulness, and the low grade of the moral 
life. 

That the aggregate result under our educational 
system has been an increase of misery — the gilded 
misery that flows around the triumphs of architecture 
and of art—is shown by the great increase in the num- 
ber of those who have found life not worth living and 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 2> 2 7 

have hopelessly sought the grave, in which they ex- 
pected the insensibility of eternal nonentity. 

In Prussia, during the thirty-five years prior to 
1858, the annual number of suicides increased from 
510 to 2180. In February, 1882, there were reported 
by newspapers 17 suicides in one week in Berlin. In 
Denmark, between 1839 and 1856, the increase was 
from 261 to 414. In France, from 1830 to 1855, from 
1739 to 3639- The increase of population was less 
than one seventh, while the suicides more than doubled. 
In the first thirty years of the century, suicides in 
Paris were more than tripled, and in the first twenty 
years at Berlin more than quadrupled. The annual 
number of suicides in the rural districts of France at 
a recent period was no in the million; but in Paris, 
the focus of education, 640, and in Copenhagen 477. 
The least educated nations of Europe, the Spanish and 
Slavonian, have the fewest suicides — less than half of 
the average rate of France, Germany, and England. 

Another proof of the increase of misery and per- 
sonal degeneracy during the increase of educational 
appliances is seen in the growth of insanity. The 
number of insane and idiotic in asylums was in 

France i l8 35 10,529 

France, j ^ ^^ 

EnglandandWales,]^ 

l5K:::::::»::::::r.::::-::::agi 

iS:::::::::::::::::::::::::1;S 

Netherlands, { 1844 8 37 

(1864 275 

City of Berlin, 1 1866. 377 

( 1868 3,179 

This increase of insanity is not explained by the 
small increase of population. The ratio of insane to 
the population was in the 

Rhenish Provinces of Prussia, in j „ , t ' bbb 

Nassau J 1840. 1 to 607 

* NaSSaU ' ] 1858 1 to 318 



328 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

The increase of insanity in Wurtemberg since 1832 
has been almost six times as great as the increase of 
the population. 

In England, insanity has so increased that among 
the poorest classes the insane are between four and 
five per cent of the population; of the entire popula- 
tion in 1880, there was one lunatic to every 357 per- 
sons. 

In the United States also, the increase of insanity 
has vastly outrun the increase of population. In 54 
asylums there were, in 1839, 1329; in 1849, 7029; in 
1859, 13,696; in 1869, 22,549. 

New York shows a remarkable increase in four years. 
In 

Year. Insane. 
1870 4,76l 

I87I 5,073 

1873 6,003 

1874 > 6,279 

A late New York legislative report says " the rap- 
id increase of insanity is truly alarming," especially 
among the p'oor; that insanity is becoming more in- 
curable, and the allied nervous disorders increasing 
also; and perhaps a similar degeneracy among those 
not considered insane is shown in the building of the 
Buffalo Insane Asylum, at a cost of " more than four 
thousand dollars for each inmate" and of a capitol build- 
ing for thirteen millions, running probably to fifteen, 
not more satisfactory than the old one torn down, 
which cost about a hundred thousand! 

Massachusetts shows the same increase in the five 
years from 1867 to 1872. The ratio was in 

1867 One for every 1,546 

1868 " " 1,486 

1869 " " i,533 

1870 " " 1,350 

1871 , " " 1,389 

1872 " " i,357 

Thus insanity has been everywhere, increasing, and 
especially in that portion of the population which has 



! 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 329 

received the most education — the least educated rural 
population having the best physique and the soundest 
mentality. Insanity and suicide, which is the next 
thing to it, increase together in the educated population 
of cities, and as the population of civilized nations 
generally is crowding into cities, the moral, intellect- 
ual, and physical degeneracy is steadily increasing 
— a frightful concentration of poverty, pauperism, crime, 
insanity and physical degradation. 

The following statistical facts compel us to rec- 
ognize the downward progress of the race under 
modern education, and the imperative necessity of a 
change in our educational system. They show that 
pauperism and crime have increased, that infant 
mortality and general mortality have increased, the 
length of life has diminished and the stature of the 
race diminished during the present century, as well as 
the general manhood, health, happiness, and sound- 
ness of mind. 

For example, from 1816 to 1840 about one fifth of the 
military recruits in France (according to Michel Levy) 
were rejected for defective physical development and 
health, and the decline of stature has been such that 
the military standard was lowered from 1.598 to 1.560 
metres. Yet from 1837 to 1856 near nine million 
recruits were examined for European armies and 53 
per cent rejected; 1,576,815 were below the standard, 
and 3,097,016 infirm. The degeneracy was least among 
agriculturists. 

Decline of the Value of Life. 

The tests for the army give sufficient evidence of 
national decline, and will of course be verified by 
every other test. Longevity has been diminishing 
generally. Between 1830 and i860 it has diminished 
two years in Prussia according to Dr. Engel. Accord- 
ing to Marc D'Espigne it has diminished three and 
two thirds years at Geneva, between 1814 and 1845. 

According to W. R. Gray the rate of mortality in 
England has increased from 10 to 12^ per cent from 



330 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

1820 to 1842, and from 1844 to 1854 the annual mor- 
tality has increased (according to Neison) from 2.18 
per cent to 2.22 per cent, which in a population of 
thirty millions would be an increase of 12,000 deaths 
annually. 

The duration of life at Boston, U. S., according to 
Mr. Shattuck has been diminishing since 1821. Be- 
tween 1821 and 1877 the number of infant deaths un- 
der five years has risen from 25 to 40 per cent of the 
mortality. 

The infant mortality has very greatly increased ac- 
cording to statistics collected in France, Switzerland, 
Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Muhlhausen— certainly an 
increase generally of more than 20 per cent. But 
among the more destitute classes it has been horribly 
and almost incredibly great. 

Every form of degeneracy is greatest in cities, 
where the influence of education and intellectual ex- 
citement is greatest; and the increase of longevity 
from various social ameliorations in the two centuries 
prior to the present, has been lost since the beginning 
of the nineteenth century. It is not necessary to 
prove that education was the cause of this decline, but 
only that it has been unable to resist it. 

Education controlled by benevolent purposes would 
have guarded against all social evils, but reckless of 
human welfare as it has been, it has permitted the la- 
boring classes to be pauperized, and to be slaughtered 
in their occupations more fearfully than by war. A 
healthy and hardy nation engaged in constant war 
might have maintained its population and grown more 
rapidly than France and Germany grow in peace. 

A single instance will illustrate the mortality aris- 
ing from lack of hygienic education. Pulmonary con- 
sumption is a strictly preventable disease. It should 
not exist at all under a hygienic condition except as a 
rare incident; and the legitimate mortality from this 
disease owing to accident, exposure, and the influence 
of other diseases does not exceed five per cent of the 
mortality, yet among the workmen of Geneva the 
mortality from this cause varies from 33 to 60 per 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 33 1 

cent, a mortality that might seem incredible did we 
not know the reliable character of the Geneva statis- 
tics. 

This is one of the diseases especially favored by 
sedentary book-education and sedentary labors in the 
arts. It would be a sad and repulsive task to review 
the catalogued misery of the long array of diseases in 
educated nations. 

I would mention merely one illustration — the in- 
creased mortality from small-pox, vastly increased in 
spite of the rigid enforcement of vaccination. The 
rapid and fatal diffusion of such a disease is simply a 
proof of the increased number of unhealthy constitu- 
tions, as a prairie-fire is a proof of the large amount 
of dried grass ready for combustion. The mortality 
from small-pox at the commencement of this century 
in England was very insignificant in amount. Vac- 
cination was made compulsory in 1853; the epidemic 
of 1857-58-59 produced 14,240 deaths; the mortality 
continued increasing, and in 1870-71-72 the deaths 
amounted to 44,840. 

Pauperism. — Let us turn to that form of total physi- 
cal and moral degeneracy which appears as pauper- 
ism, which arises from degeneracy of mind, brain and 
body, and produces a rapid mortality and develop- 
ment of insanity and idiocy. A commission from the 
Legislature of Massachusetts in 1854 reported that 
" the pauper class furnishes in the ratio of its numbers 
64 times as many insane as the other classes." One in 
32 of the paupers were insane in England and Wales 
in 1862, and the ratio continues increasing, more re- 
cent reports showing one in 25 and one in 20. Pau- 
perism in 1852 had risen to one thirteenth of the pop- 
ulation of Paris, one twelfth in Italy, one eighth in 
London, one sixth in Belgium. In New York the in- 
crease has been in progress throughout the century, 
and rose from 58,000 in 187 1 to 69,000 in 1874. 

Intemperance, at once the symptom and the cause of 
physical and moral decline, has been increasing fear- 
fully, and no one will contend that our educational 
system has exerted any protective influence against it. 



332 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

Indeed the protective influence of religion is to-day 
being undermined by education. The London Times 
said a few years ago, " In our time we have suffered 
more from the intemperance of our people than from 
war, pestilence and famine combined." In March, 1881, 
it said, as quoted by Neal Dow, that 

11 Something must be done to redeem the nation from the slough 
of drunkenness in which it is now wallowing. The drink bill of 
the country, it says, has enormously increased since i860, with mul- 
tiplied horrors of every kind coming from drunkenness. In that 
year the drink bill was ^86,897,683 or $434,488,415. In 1879 the 
cost of the liquor consumed in the Kingdom was ^"147,288,760 or 
$736,443,800. The Times says: ' Suppose an unexpected visita- 
tion of unexampled prosperity. How high would the total stand 
in the last year of the century ? If there be any probability, one 
way or the other, it is that the year 1900 will be as much above 
1880 as that is above i860, and that the drink bill will then be 
^246,000,000 or $1,230,000,000 ! For the whole population of these 
isles the average expenditure in drink is more than £3 or $15 for 
every man, woman and child, and more than ^15 or $75 for each 
family. It is vastly more than the public revenue; vastly more 
than the most inflated and extraordinary expenditure we have had 
for twenty years. It is more than ten times as much as is spent 
for the poor, watched by economists with such jealous eyes. As 
for the revenue of the Church of England, which many call mon- 
strous, and which certainly is exceptional in comparison with other 
churches and religious communities, if it were brought to the 
hammer to-morrow, glebes, rent charges, parsonages, churches, 
episcopal and capitular incomes, everything down to the church 
furniture and parish stock of vestments, it would scarcely fetch the 
amount of last year's . . . drink bill. The workingman grudges 
a few pence for the education of his children, and spends often as 
many shillings in drink. He will not lay by as much as a shilling a 
week to provide for probable sickness and inevitable old age, but 
he spends, perhaps, ten times that sum in beer and spirits. But 
he is not the greatest sinner; far from it. His betters — lay, spir- 
itual, professional, or trading — are generally far worse than he is. 
The gentleman in the pulpit who delivers weekly diatribes against 
drunkenness and improvidence, . . . often spends ten times as 
much, though he really wants it less. It is a very ordinary thing 
for the wine and beer bills to amount to ^50— $250 — out of a total 
expenditure of ^500 — $2500.' " 

Nothing but the moral and industrial education of 
the young can stay this flood; churches, colleges, 
schools and temperance societies have failed because 
they labor upon adults, laboring to cure rather than 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. . 333 

prevent. As well might we rely on saving a sinking 
ship and carrying on its voyage by depending on the 
pumps instead of repairing the broken and rotten 
planks below. 

Where has not intemperance penetrated ? Of course 
the soldiers of an intemperate nation are themselves 
intemperate. The British army in South Africa under 
Wolseley were thoroughly demoralized by drink, made 
the night hideous with their outcries, and sacked the 
stores, hotels and shops at Heilberg and Utrecht, as 
we learn by the correspondence of Dr. Russell. 

The testimony of the Church, as given by a commit- 
tee of the lower House of Convocation in 1869, is 
that " a careful estimate of the mortality occasioned 
by intemperance in the United Kingdom, including 
the lives of innocent persons cut short by the drunk- 
enness of others, places the mighty sacrifice at 50,000 
persons every year — a number thrice as great as that 
which perished on both sides upon the fatal field of 
Waterloo." This statement is very moderate. Dr. 
Norman Kerr, unwilling to believe in such fatality, 
has more recently investigated the question and de- 
cided that the mortality directly produced by alcohol 
is greatly above a hundred thousand annually. 

According to most recent statistics, Great Britain 
has 26,114 breweries (a greater number than any other 
country), which produce an amount every year equal 
to thirty-nine quarts for every inhabitant of the kingdom. 

The horrible intemperance of Great Britain during 
the last ten years has been fully displayed by the cal- 
culation of Wm. Hoyle, who shows that the expendi- 
ture for drink is more than twice the entire rental of 
the kingdom. In Ireland, with far lower rents, the 
average amount expended on liquor in ten years was 
^13,823,162, and the total rental ^11,518,392. The 
enormous excess is found in England, with its high 
rental. The British consumption of beer in 1880 was 
905,088,978 gallons, and of ardent spirits 28,457,486 
gallons. 

Sweden is still more intemperate, consuming, ac- 
cording to the report of our minister, Mr. Andrews, 



334 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

about 2\ gallons of whiskey annually for each inhab- 
itant, or about ten gallons for each adult male. In 
Germany and Switzerland the consumption of alcohol 
and tobacco is increasing, and Swiss manhood is declin- 
ing. Germany smoked 7,000,000,000 cigars in 1880 
besides her pipes, and progressed downward in morals, 
having 11,692 convictions in 1873; 12,844 m ^74; I2 r 
127 in 1875; 13,197 in 1876, and 14,847 in 1877. 

The most alarming fact in such statistics, which 
might be extended to fill a volume, is the long-contin- 
ued steady increase of intemperance, vice, cri?ne and poverty, 
in utter defiance of all the agencies now employed to 
check them. 

In the United States we have the same alarming in- 
crease in spite of taxation, temperance societies and 
stringent legislation. The fermented liquors (accord- 
ing to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue) in 1870 
amounted to 6,574,000 barrels; in 1880, 13,347,000 bar- 
rels were reported. There has been an increase of 
three and a third millions in the last three years. Of 
ardent spirits the report of the last year was a produc- 
tion of 71,892,621 gallons. The drink bill of the United 
States is commonly estimated at six hundred mil- 
lions, and the number of saloons in the State of New 
York is over 23,000, according to the Commissioner of 
Internal Revenue. The Temperance Alliance of Lou- 
isiana estimates the cost of the liquor drank in that 
State as more than that of the entire cotton, sugar and 
rice crops. 

It is no wonder then that intemperance has appeared 
among women. They drink wine, beer and spirits 
in Great Britain with a freedom that would be offen- 
sive in America, and even here it has been found nec- 
essary to establish asylums for inebriate women. In 
the city of New York fifty-six drunken women were 
taken to the Tombs on a single day in June, 1881. " In 
the jail in Brooklyn," said Rev. H. W. Beecher in June, 
1 88 1, "there used to be a room in which forty or fifty 
women were herded, with no chairs or benches, squat- 
ting like swine, sent up for ten or twenty or thirty 
days for drunkenness. At the end they were let out 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 335 

like animals from a barn-yard, to go in the name of 
the devil." 

That all this intemperance carries with it a corre- 
sponding increase of crime no one would deny. No 
student of the temperance question would admit that 
less than three fourths of our crime is due to intem- 
perance. Four fifths is a more common estimate. But 
the great world movement to a lower plane of life — to 
crime and misery — does not depend entirely upon the 
flow of alcohol; on the contrary, the demand for alco- 
hol is itself a consequence of the lower plane of life, a 
consequence of the moral degeneracy. Brutality de- 
mands alcohol, and alcohol feeds brutality, and hence 
they increase together, reciprocally cause and effect. 
This is illustrated by the statistics of the State of 
Maine under a prohibitory liquor law which is com- 
monly called the Maine Law. 

From 185 1 to 1880 the population increased fourteen 
per cent or one seventh — from 587,680 to 648,945. Dur- 
ing this period, in spite of temperance laws (enacted in 
1852), churches and New England education, the num- 
ber of crimes has tripled — the State Prison convicts, 87 
in 185 1, were 267 in 1880. The high crimes of murder, 
murderous assault, arson, rape, robbery and piracy in- 
creased from 14 to 67. Divorce, insanity, and suicide 
have also largely increased during this period. And 
these evils arise among the native population enjoying 
the benefits of common schools and temperance laws, 
which have very largely reduced the consumption of 
liquor — four fifths of the convicts in the State Prison 
being natives. This degeneracy has been in progress 
sixty years; during the twenty years from 1820 to 1840 
"only two convictions of murder or arson are known 
to ha-ve occurred," says Judge Stoddard. Thus en- 
forced temperance has failed as signally as the church 
and the school to arrest the downward tendency. 

What is the lesson to be learned by sociology from 
such facts ? What is their explanation ? 

There are four prominent causes. The whole civil- 
ized world has been gradually leaving the country and 
crowding into the large cities, in which the race de- 



336 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

generates so rapidly that if it were not for the health 
and vigor of the country the population of the civil- 
ized nations would actually decline, the deaths exceed- 
ing the births. (In February, 1882, the city of New 
York had 2126 births and 3297 deaths, according to its 
official reports.) It is not necessary to array the sta- 
tistics and look at the ghastly details of physical and 
moral degeneracy in city life, which are undisputed 
and are familiar to those who have attended to the 
subject. With all their polish and intellectuality great 
cities are known to be great ulcers, and their intel- 
lectuality has no more power to save them than 
sunshine has to prevent putrefaction. The agricultu- 
ral population, who form 53 per cent of the entire 
population in France, commit but 30 per cent of the 
crimes. The education of Massachusetts has not saved 
it. The State reports confess that atrocious crimes 
are common. 

The second cause is the conscription of the entire 
population for military service — the army, being a re- 
bellion against Divine law, a school of pessimism that 
debases the moral nature, and, like a malignant tumor, 
absorbs the life-blood of the nation, driving the poor 
by exhausting taxation into pauperism and prostitu- 
tion, while the army itself, by its low moral and phys- 
iological status, adds greatly to the sum total of dis- 
ease, insanity, suicide, and death. The year 1881 re- 
corded 273 suicides in the Prussian army. 

The third cause is the industrial ignorance of labor- 
ers, which disqualifies them for profitable employments 
and perpetuates their poverty by the enormous com- 
petition of hungry, unskilled laborers. 

The fourth cause is the selfish competition and gam- 
bling commerce in which capital in a few skilful hands 
grows with magical rapidity by dividends, monopo- 
lies and speculation, while labor unenlightened must 
struggle despairingly (as it is in excess) for a bare sub- 
sistence, thus establishing a permanent oligarchy and 
a suffering and therefore turbulent or criminal prole- 
tariat more and more crushed from year to year by 
tyrannical taxation resulting from wars and profligacy 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 337 

of expenditure. Even in republican France (supposed 
to be the most prosperous country of Europe) the an- 
nual budget has risen at present to $606,000,000 (ac- 
cording to M. Leroy Beaulieu) exclusive of local tax- 
ation. Thus the governmental burden amounts to 
about one hundred dollars per capita upon all the 
adult males who can be accounted efficient producers ! 
A financial slavery ! 

A fifth cause may be found in the unhealthy condi- 
tion of cities, reeking with the accumulated filth of 
centuries (which has penetrated the entire soil), pesti- 
lential in the foul, dark, crowded tenements of the 
poor, fed scantily upon food largely adulterated. In 
May, "188 1, the Paris Municipal Council reported, as 
the result of the examinations of food sold in shops, 
that of 231 samples of wine only six were good and 
184 were absolutely condemned; four fifths of the 
samples of milk were condemned, and one fourth of 
the samples of bread and pastry. 

The deep underlying cause of all is found in the or- 
ganization of society and all its institutions upon a 
basis of pure and intense selfishness instead of the 
principles of Christianity taught by Jesus. Life is al- 
together a desperate competitive struggle — a struggle 
to grasp, monopolize, and indirectly enslave. The pri- 
vate monopoly of the soil alone (which is the property 
of the nation) establishes a permanent cancer upon the 
social system — a tax, according to the rates of English 
rental, of about $6400 per annum to every square mile, 
and in large cities upon each quarter acre of central 
ground — which labor must pay to hands that need not 
labor, to foster luxury and selfishness and to widen the 
gulf between classes by depressing the lower class. 
This mighty social wrong, which I exposed in essays on 
" The Land and the People" thirty-five years ago, is 
just beginning to be seriously considered by econo- 
mists and statesmen, and the remedy I then proposed 
is now calmly considered by the best thinkers. 

For none of these great evils does our common 
education offer or suggest any remedy. It develops 
no high principle, it undermines more than it assists 



33 8 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

religion, it harmonizes with selfish ostentation and 
ambition, it increases the separation and alienation of 
classes, it aggravates discontent with the existing so- 
cial order, it stimulates wild pessimistic speculations, 
furnishes selfish intellect to journalism and politics, 
and incendiary leadership to discontented masses. 
" The liberal professions," says Royce, " composing 22 
per cent of the entire population, form 4 per cent of 
the criminals in France — an extraordinary statement, if 
correct. 

The true full-orbed education of the moral and in- 
dustrial faculties annihilates intemperance and vice, 
assures the prosperity of all, places the humblest la- 
borer in the path that leads to comfort, intelligence, 
and happiness, destroys the social alienation of classes 
and the consequent jealousies, forbids all future tur- 
bulence and convulsion, elevates women above the 
sphere of prostitution, restores integrity to govern- 
mental affairs, empties prisons and almshouses, unites 
industrial pursuits in co-operative and profitable 
systems of stability, spreads religion through all 
classes, establishes the ideal republic, and prepares for 
the advent of the Kingdom of Heaven by removing 
every obstacle. 

Decline in Virtue. — Crime (according to Potter) has 
increased fivefold in England and Wales from 1800 to 
1850, over sevenfold in Scotland, and over twelvefold 
in Ireland, while the population has hardly increased 
80 per cent. 

In Holland, France and Norway a great increase of 
crime has occurred, and incendiarism has especially 
increased in France, in Paris, and in London. Ac- 
cording to M. Joseph Reinach in a work on crime, more 
than half the persons arrested for crimes in Paris are 
minors, and there has been a very great increase since 
1878. 

In the United States crime outruns population, as 
we had 

Population. Convicts in State Prisons. 

In 1850 19,553,668 5,646 

" i860 26,922,537 19,086 

" 1870 33,589,377 32,901 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS, 339 

The increase cannot be ascribed to immigration, 
but is due mainly to the native American enjoying the 
advantages of common schools. The increase of na- 
tive American convicts from i860 to 1870 was from 
10,143 to 24,173. In the city of New York the repres- 
sion of crime costs more than education. Police and 
judiciary salaries amount to $4,-736,553, educational 
salaries to $2,769,168. 

In Massachusetts, which is often held up as a model 
of educational progress, the amount of crime is much 
above the general average of the United States, and 
the number of insane, idiotic, deaf and dumb in 1876 
was 16,513. Of the convicts in that year only 11 per 
cent were illiterate. The progressive increase of pov- 
erty was shown by the increase of objects of State 
charity from 29,066 in 1872 to 82,997 in 1877. 

In Maine, which has had not only the New England 
system of common schools, but that maximum result 
of the religious and educational system of that State — 
the " Maine law" of prohibition against all use of al- 
coholic liquids — there has been a remarkable increase 
of crime from 185 1 to 1880, a period during which the 
prohibition law was in force. The State Prison had 
but 87 prisoners in 185 1, yet in 1880 there were 267; 
during this threefold increase of crime the population 
increased less than one eighth (11.27 per cent). The 
prisoners for homicidal crimes were in 185 1 but 8 ; in 
1880, 33 . 

Illegitimacy is continually increasing, embracing 
about one seventh of the births in European cities. 
While increasing in America, " seven hundred thou- 
sand illegitimate children says Royce, "are annually 
born in Christian Europe." Stockholm in one year 
had as many illegitimate as legitimate births. About 
two per cent of the population of large cities are suffer- 
ing under the blighting poison of venereal disease. 
Statistics show its great increase in this century in 
France, Germany, Austria, Denmark and Great Brit- 
ain, and hospital reports in New York exhibit a pro- 
gressive increase. Thirty per cent of the entire British 
army was afflicted with this disease in i860. The 



340 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

prevalence of this blasting disease fosters every species 
of moral deterioration. 

Parallel to all this increase of crime and corruption 
is the decline of religious sentiment, patriotism and 
honor. The corruptions of the Federal government, 
the near approach of parties to civil war in 1877, the 
terrible riot and arson at Pittsburg, and the fierce 
propaganda of incendiary principles among laborers 
and social reformers are danger-signals of the volcanic 
elements at the foundation of society, the dangerous 
elements which develop in the sphere of selfishness 
as fever develops in the sphere of malaria. " He who 
studies the movement of American society," said Rev. 
M. Harbison, at Washington city, " cannot fail to see 
that we are under a reign of selfishness in striking 
contrast to forty years ago." 

Religion is declining ; an eclipse of faith is visibly 
begun, and a " moral interregnum" is anticipated by 
many. Money is not lacking, but zeal and faith. Eng- 
land alone has spent $180,000,000 this century in build- 
ing churches. Agnosticism is spreading silently in 
the pulpit, not by the growth of more rational faith, 
but by the decline of all faith. The army of physical 
scientists are constructing an iron-clad system which 
excludes every religious conception. They hold the 
majority of colleges; and the very existence of life as 
anything but a phenomenon of physical forces is peremp- 
torily ignored in leading scientific associations with- 
out a word of dissent from scientists or of remonstrance 
from the pulpit or from journalism. The hostile flag 
of materialism is thus quietly planted on the ramparts, 
and waves undisturbed. 

Protestantism has not only paralyzed the papal arm, 
but become paralyzed itself through a large part of its 
area. Eighteen hundred and twenty Presbyterian 
churches gained not a convert in 1879, which means 
that they are falling behind the progress of popula- 
tion, and the Congregational churches are little better. 
It is not because men are recoiling from the dogmas 
of orthodoxy to more attractive forms of religion, for 
the liberal or non-evangelical denominations are stag- 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 34 1 

nant also. Extreme wealth and luxury, extreme pov- 
erty, heartless education encouraging idleness, and 
wide-spread physical degeneracy, and social misery, 
indicated by divorce, prostitution and suicide, have 
superseded the moral manhood that aspires to a di- 
viner life. The prospect is gloomy, and the darkest 
period has not yet arrived, but I am well assured that 
uplifting energies have been arranged by the Divine 
wisdom, the grand results of which will appear two 
centuries hence, by which time the fruits of moral 
education will be realized, but among the most enlight- 
ened they will begin to appear before this century 
ends. 

All true philanthropists and deep thinkers take sub- 
stantially similar views to those here presented of our 
existing degradation and future delivery by education, 
co-operation, and practical religion. 

An enlightened philanthropist (whose name I have 
lost), after protracted investigation of the social ques- 
tion, presented his views to one of the most liberal of 
the English peers, in a letter from which I quote the 
following. After pointing out the existing evils — 1. 
Lack of good family homes; 2. Lack of wholesome 
cheap food; 3. Lack of leisure for social duties, rec- 
reation and instruction; 4. Lack of good local gov- 
ernment; 5. Lack of industrial instruction to make 
skilled workmen; 6. Lack of parks and other institu- 
tions for innocent recreation; 7. Lack of organization 
of the public service for the common good — he pro- 
ceeds : 

" The first great danger I see in England lies in the wide-spread 
growing poverty and demoralization of the poor. 

" The second lies in the growing deterioration of the breed of 
English men, women, and children, who are being reared in the 
lanes, alleys, and filth of our wealth-growing towns. 

" Next, in the higher class of our skilled workmen I find a fixed 
antagonism to the wealthy, middle, and mercantile classes of which 
they are the tools and the victims. 

"Lately, I find the aristocracy of England, which has so long 
maintained its standard socially and intellectually higher than that 
of the aristocracy of other countries — I say I regret to find that 
aristocracy ceasing to occupy itself with the direction, government, 
and well-being of the people of England, who would be only too 



34 2 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

glad to be instructed, guided, and ruled by educated and well-bred 
men, instead of being ruled by the classes whose interests are 
directly antagonistic equally to the cultivators of the land and the 
skilled workmen. 

" I am satisfied that these feelings, little expressed, are widely and 
strongly felt. I am sure that the workingmen are gradually tend- 
ing to some great social revolution, and I think it has been brought 
much nearer by the present war of irresponsible sovereigns. 

"The practical question I now think is merely whether the great 
social changes which are necessary and inevitable shall now take 
place by means of a large and friendly organization of the educated, 
wise, and refined men who form the English aristocracy with the 
able, skilled, uneducated, but well-meaning workingmen who form 
the bone and sinew of the English nation. 

" In that case we may expect the revolution to be wise, gentle, 
rapid, and peaceful. If, on the contrary, it is let alone, it will be an 
explosion from below." 

All that he says of England is true in a minor degree 
of America. Our degeneracy has already brought us 
to the verge of social convulsions, and our crime-in- 
fested cities are continually in danger of the suprem- 
acy of the mob, which will readily find shrewd and 
intelligent leaders. 

In our great educational crisis I see no escape but 
moral education. 

We have looked at the increasing darkness, but 
not at the dawning lights. Education in its first ame- 
liorations has been beneficial only to the intellect — it 
is going to be beneficial to the moral nature, to the 
development of woman, and the elevation of labor. 
Religion in its first decline before advancing science 
is losing its dogmatic power, but the free thought 
which at first seems fatal will ultimately be its salva- 
tion when free thought and faith unite in establishing 
scientific and philosophic 'religion. While the Church 
is losing in power, fashion and numbers, it is gaining 
in sincerity and spirituality. The corrupt Church of 
England is to be disestablished and thereby purified. 
Fifty years ago its pastorates were mostly corrupt 
sinecures, the majority of the clergy being non-resi- 
dents; now the non-residents are but one in seven. 
The luxurious fox-hunting, wine and brandy tippling 
idlers who draw their salaries at a distance from their 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 343 

parishes are superseded mostly by a working clergy. 
Fifty years more will work still greater changes for 
the better. 

The laborers who have suffered so long in helpless- 
ness are compelled to think and combine by suffering. 
The Rochdale system of co-operation in England, and 
the co-operative banks established by workingmen in 
Germany, are gradually preparing a better social 
condition, the ideal of which has been almost attained 
in the Industrial Palace, the Familistere of M. Godin, 
at Guise, in France. The proper treatment of crimi- 
nals and the insane is becoming understood and acted 
on, and medical science is rapidly becoming amelio- 
rated and liberalized, while developing hygienic laws 
and sanitary measures to sustain the public health. 

The victims of oppression are making their escape 
in increasing numbers to the American continent, and 
sending back moral power to aid in peaceful revolu- 
tion, the establishment of the Confederate Republic of 
European nations ; while through a myriad of unseen 
agencies an overruling guardian Providence is con- 
ducting us through a cloudy period of human destiny 
to the age of true civilization and social harmony. 

The art of healing is advancing more rapidly than 
ever. Anthropology is now an'organized and demon- 
strated science; barbarian amusements are repressed; 
spirituality and refinement are increasing, and the 
industrial arts are multiplying wealth, diminishing the 
necessity of labor and making universal comfort possi- 
ble when avaricious monopoly shall be checked. 

The gloomy statistics of national degeneracy would 
be discouraging indeed if we could not discover so 
many counteracting influences and elements of social 
progress. These we find in the increasing enlighten- 
ment of all classes, the steady progress of numerous 
philanthropies in temperance, charity and education, 
the accumulating funds of benevolent and educational 
institutions, the increasing amount of skilled labor 
and the educational institutions devoted to the prac- 
tical arts, the increasing enlightenment and energy of 
the oppressed classes, demanding more and more of 



344 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 

liberty and justice, more and more of democratic in- 
stitutions, their discovery that despotism and war are 
their enemies and that priestcraft had perverted re- 
ligion, the vast improvement in all productive arts, 
the increasing efficiency of labor, and the steady ac- 
cumulation of wealth which outruns the growth of 
population and falsifies the doctrines of Malthus — 
this wealth being continually more beneficial because 
more equally distributed, and this producing a greater 
diffusion of comfort in society. 

The facts which illustrate this economical progress 
in Great Britain and France during the past forty 
years have been collected by Mr. M. G. Mulhall from 
authentic statistics. , 

The increase of aggregate wealth in the past forty 
years is indeed marvellous and beyond precedent. In 
Scotland and Ireland the wealth to-day is about three 
times as great per capita as it was forty years ago — 
more than three times in Scotland and less in Ireland. 
In France also the increase during forty years is estimat- 
ed at threefold. This wealth being more equally dif- 
fused there has been a great increase also of the deposi- 
tors in savings banks. In France during forty years 
since 1840 the number of savings-bank depositors has 
increased twelvefold (from 311,000 to 3,850,000), and 
the aggregate amount of the d eposits has increased from 
$34,000,000 to $256,000,000. An astonishing proof of 
this diffusion of wealth was the readiness of the peo- 
ple to lend to the government in 1872, when there were 
934,000 French subscribers to the government loan! 

During this period of financial progress the average 
wealth of the working class in Great Britain and Ire- 
land has very nearly doubled, and their enjoyment of 
the comforts of life has also increased. The consump- 
tion of meat, flour, sugar, and tea per capita has largely 
increased in Great Britain, and as this increase could 
not have occurred among the prosperous and well fed 
class it indicates a very great increase in the com- 
forts of the poorer classes; the consumption of tea per 
capita having risen from 22 to 73 ounces, would indi- 
cate that three times as many are now able to indulge 



THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS. 345 

in that drink as enjoyed it forty years ago. While 
the comforts of the poorer class have thus increased, 
the general improvement has diminished the number 
of that class in the United Kingdom and increased the 
numbers of the middle class and the wealthy. 

We may therefore cherish the hope that the nadir 
of physical and moral degeneracy has been reached, 
and that with increased comfort, increased equality and 
justice, a rational system of education will make the 
upward progress of society more rapid than its degen- 
eracy has been. 



CHAPTER XII. 
VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

Health a positive condition, an abundance and strength in all our 
powers, physical, mental, and moral. — Ill-health brings fail- 
ure in the weaker powers, and these are very often the moral. 
— Ventilation has great control over health. — Shameful ne- 
glect of ventilation. — Prevalence of pulmonary diseases.— At- 
mospheric impurities affect other organs more than the lungs. 
— Effect of a negative atmosphere on lungs. — Effects of evap- 
oration, condensation, rain, and dew. — Effects of freezing and 
thawing on the atmosphere. — Benefits of sunshine, vegetation, 
and ozone. — Effects of dryness and of watery vapor. — Pul- 
monary disease mostly based on pulmonary irritation, or " catch- 
ing cold." — Colds not explained by medical science. — How pro- 
duced by draughts of cold air in warm apartments. — Effects of 
draughts through cracks. — Effects of dampness of floors and 
walls. — Effects of negative air from cellars and wet surfaces. — 
Different effects of fire-places and stoves as to crack-blowing. 
— Explanation of negative and positive states of the atmos- 
phere. — The open fire-place an efficient ventilator. — How to 
prevent the cause of colds by warm-air pipes. — Evils of exces- 
sive ventilation. — The proper use of ventiducts for ventilation. 
— All such ventilation imperfect. — The impure air should be 
removed. — Quantity of air moved in ventilation. — Distal ven- 
tilation inefficient. — Proximate ventilation the only proper 
method. — Plan of construction explained. — Difference of ven- 
tilation in summer and winter. — Application to churches, thea- 
tres, schools and hospitals. — Other means of purification by 
disinfection. — Cooling by ice in hot weather. — Happy condi- 
tion of ventilated, flower-surrounded halls, full of music and 
gayety. — Song and sentiment extending through all education 
and all subsequent life. 

Health is a positive condition. It is not merely the 
absence of disease, but a normal operation of the en- 
tire apparatus of body and soul, marked by activity, 
buoyancy, efficiency, happiness, and power to resist 
all disturbing, depressing, and morbific influences. A 
dull, monotonous, and uninteresting life may be free 
from organic disease, but it is not a life of health. 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 347 

The moody and indolent savage has not the health of 
the white man, for health is the sum total of vital ac- 
tivities, which is moderate in the savage. It is the 
sum total of the moral, intellectual, passional, visceral, 
and muscular life, and attains its perfection as these 
are fully developed and harmoniously balanced. 

A failure or diminution of health, therefore, is a re- 
duction of some of the physical, intellectual, and moral 
faculties below their normal power and activity. The 
failure or decline of health necessarily affects first the 
weaker faculties, or those which have been overtaxed 
and exhausted. It may be a failure in the stomach 
(dyspepsia and loss of appetite), or failure in liver or 
bowels, or in the muscular energy and activity; or in 
the external senses, the executive ambitions, the mem- 
ory and understanding, the social tendencies, the 
firmness and self-control, the cheerful spirits, the affec- 
tions, or the moral and religious sense of duty. 

Whichever of these powers may be constitutionally 
weak is liable to decline or to fail essentially as health 
declines. In the majority of mankind the moral facul- 
ties are first to show the decline, when any depressing 
or deranging influence is at work. The individual be- 
comes indifferent to his social relations and incapable 
or unwilling to make himself agreeable in society. He 
loses interest in all his duties, becomes indolent, 
gloomy, and irritable. He loses interest in his studies 
and pursuits, loses hope and ambition, and lives on a 
lower plane of life. Even the illustrious Carlyle 
could not resist the moroseness produced by ill-health. 

This moral decline may or may not be accompanied 
by a variety of physical ailments. In delicate persons, 
girls, and young ladies we often see the decline indi- 
cated in the loss of strength, loss of appetite, and ner- 
vous derangement, while the moral nature remains 
unimpaired. When the moral nature is very strong 
we are delighted to observe all the charms of a high 
moral nature unimpaired by physical suffering. But 
more frequently we observe the opposite, for a major- 
ity alike of children and adults manifest their decline 
of health first in the moral and intellectual nature. 



34§ VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

Hence the paramount importance of hygiene in 
moral education, health being to many the necessary 
condition of amiability, and the necessity of present- 
ing a practical view of that portion of hygiene most 
easily controlled, which relates to the school-room and 
which bears directly on the intellect and spirits, de- 
pressing or exalting all the vital energies. The pres- 
ervation of a healthful atmosphere by ventilation is 
so easy if rightly understood, and so generally ne- 
glected from ignorance,* as to render a chapter on 
this subject necessary. 

Ventilation — the providing of perfectly wholesome 
air for human beings to breathe who live in houses is 
a matter entirely free from mystery or difficulty, ex- 
cepting the mystery and difficulty which arise from 
ignorance. It depends on a few simple mechanical 
principles, and, rightly understood, it is cheap as well 

* The indifference and ignorance on this subject seem to be al- 
most universal. A millionaire of Brooklyn (Mr. R.), inhabiting a 
costly mansion supposed to be faultless in every respect, believed 
to be especially good in its plumbing construction, nevertheless 
fell a victim to sewer-gas after it had developed four cases of 
scarlatina and diphtheria in the house. His own attack was scarlet 
fever. The President of the Health Board once expressed the 
opinion that half the houses in New York City were unfit for resi- 
dence on account of impure gases. 

It is no better in Europe. Mr. Rawlinson, the eminent engineer 
at the Exeter Sanitary Congress, spoke of the foulness of the great 
government offices and official residences in Downing Street. The 
drainage of Somerset House he pronounced so "indescribably 
foul " that he would rather resign than live there, and the War Of- 
fice was " fouler than any common beggars' lodging-house." "So- 
ciety will be horrified to learn," said a London newspaper, " that 
Mr. Rawlinson considers Belgravia to be the worst part of London 
so far -as sewage goes. This is really a scandalous state of mat- 
ters." 

The condition is no better in Paris. The famous astronomer Le- 
verrier had to make complaint of the wretched ventilation at what 
is supposed to be the very head-quarters of modern science — the 
hall of the French Academy of Sciences of the National Institute. 

Even buildings of recent erection under the supervision of emi- 
nent architects are sometimes found unfit for habitation, as in the 
case of the palace of the Duke of Connaught at Bagshot Park, 
which, according to Dr. Playfair, was dangerous to the life of any 
who might inhabit it. 



II 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 349 

as simple, and there is no reason why every edifice in 
our country should not have perfect ventilation. 
Every architect should understand this subject per- 
fectly, and the exposition given in this chapter will be 
a sufficient guide for architects. 

Yet we have many reports of badly ventilated halls 
and school-rooms which are sources of disease, and 
even our National Capitol, where large expenses were 
encountered and expensive apparatus provided for 
ventilation, has been in a condition positively dis- 
graceful. A correspondent of the Cotirier- Journal re- 
cently (Dec. 6, 1876) said : 

''Upon first entering the Hall of Representatives it appeared 
dark and gloomy; the air was already so vitiated that it assumed 
the form of a mist that settled between the floor and galleries. The 
heat was overpowering. Never before were there such illy-con- 
structed chambers as those of the Senate and House of Represen- 
tatives. Both are in the centre of the wings of the Capitol, with- 
out a window or any opening for fresh air. Both are death-traps, 
and every year several valuable lives are sacrificed to the ignorant 
architect who contrived chambers only fit for cremation. They 
are admirably adapted to that purpose, only one must first under- 
go the tortures of asphyxia.'' 

An intelligent gentleman of my acquaintance re- 
marked after visiting the Capitol that it reminded 
him of a hog-pen. Such language is too strong, but 
certainly the ignorance displayed in the Capitol is re- 
markable. The universal neglect of physical science 
in education heretofore — the universal neglect espe- 
cially of hygiene — costs our country millions of money 
and thousands of lives annually. The condition of the 
Kentucky Penitentiary has been a discredit to the 
State, showing a large loss of life from its crowded 
and ill-ventilated condition ; and I have heard of pa- 
rents compelled to withdraw their children from our 
public schools on account of their dangerous condi- 
tion as to ventilation. I have often found in bed- 
chambers of respectable families and in hospitals well 
endowed an atmosphere more unwholesome than that 
of a good stable; and I have still more frequently 



350 VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

found sitting-rooms and bed-rooms dangerous to 
health and life from draughts of cold air.* 

* In New York there have been many gross violations of hygiene 
in schools. For example, in grammar school No. 20, in Chrystie 
Street, of which the N. Y. Tribtcne said: 

44 The air of the room was damp and foul — from the rear came 
very bad odors. There are fifty-four children under the care of 
Miss H usted, who are from six to eight years old. The teacher is 
herself suffering from malaria, and says she keeps herself at work 
until vacation only by a liberal use of quinine. She said that the 
inspection by an officer of the Board of Health a year ago, who 
pronounced the building all right, was made at a time when the 
rooms in the rear had been cleaned and the place well aired. Last 
summer it was necessary to go out of the room every fifteen min- 
utes to get the fresh air. On a very warm day in May the class 
was taken out in the yard in the open air as the atmosphere of the 
room was intolerable. When the reporter visited it the door was 
open for ventilation, producing a disagreeable draught, and the win- 
dows facing the recently infected house were nearly closed. Very 
little air entered apparently from the windows on the opposite side 
of the room, as they were shut off from a free circulation by a high 
wall." 

44 Not one public school-house in New York City that is adequate- 
ly supplied with fresh air; not one that is not twice as unhealthy as 
it would be if even the existing imperfect means of ventilation 
were properly utilized ! So reports Dr. Endeman to the Board of 
Health. Do New York fathers and mothers realize what this 
means ?" — N, Y. Sun. 

44 Dr. Endeman, chemist to the Board of Health, reported at 
the meeting of the Board yesterday that the results of his examina- 
tion of the air in the public schools did not differ from those ob- 
tained by him in 1872 and 1873. I n none of these schools, he 
says, did he find adequate means of ventilation. The appliances 
for ventilation are best in the school in West Fifty-eighth Street, but 
they are not often used on account of exposing the children to 
draughts. The window affords, in almost every case, the sole means 
of ventilation, and even here free passage of air is obstructed by 
appliances for keeping out the sunlight." 

44 Dr. J. R. Black, writing in the Sanitarian, says: 4 There is 
scarcely a public building in any of the States, whether it be 
State-house, court-house, public hall, school-house, church, or 
asylum, that is constructed in accordance with the strict require- 
ments of hygiene ;' and we will add to this that the latest and most 
imposing medical college built in the city of New York, in 1875, 
supposed to be a model institution of its kind, was provided with 
but one lecture-room, capable of seating 500 students, and with 
two small windows, one insufficient door of exit for the audience, 
and absolutely no visible means of ventilation. Yet the room is 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 35 I 

Having myself inherited very delicate lungs I have 
had especial reason for studying this subject, and I 
have in consequence arrived at a simple and practical 



occupied to its fullest capacity during the college session during 
four hours in succession each morning, and also a few hours dur- 
ing the afternoon. Here earnest medical students endeavor to 
gain a knowledge of disease, its cause, and how to cure it, while 
their blood is being poisoned by the breathing of foul air and their 
brains are made sluggish by the want of sufficient oxygen. Com- 
petent authorities have decided that every person should have 3000 
cubic feet of fresh air to breathe each hour. . And since the air of a 
room cannot be changed by the best methods of ventilation oftener 
than three times an hour without subjecting the occupants to 
draughts, all hospital-wards, sick-rooms, and halls for public meet- 
ings should have at least 1000 cubic feet capacity for each individual 
occupant. " — Health Monthly. 

11 We have the report of the visiting committee of the public hos- 
pitals. The ventilation of Bellevue Hospital, the committee say, 
is, and must always be, bad; the air cannot be kept pure in such a 
labyrinth of passages and wards; but the erection of ventilating 
towers outside the walls is suggested. The Pavilion Hospital on 
Hart's Island is ventilated by opening the windows; there are ven- 
tilators along the ridge of the roof, but they are boxed up in win- 
ter, and, therefore, in stormy weather it is difficult to keep the 
wards warm and let in fresh air at the same time. The ventilation 
of large public institutions, like schools, hospitals, and courts, has 
attracted attention lately. Children, patients, and judges and jur- 
ors have felt the effect of impure air, and complaint after com- 
plaint has been made, but, excepting in the court-rooms, little has 
been done to get proper ventilation. Perhaps the committee in- 
specting the public schools may find a remedy that can be applied 
to the hospitals." — Sun. 

" A mining engineer, writing to the London Times about the in- 
adequate ventilation of the Metropolitan Underground Railway, 
says that while travelling on that line recently he became almost 
suffocated by the poisonous atmosphere, and had to be assisted out 
of the train before reaching his destination. On applying at a 
druggist's for a restorative the latter instantly exclaimed : ' Oh, I 
see, Metropolitan Railway,' and at once poured out a wine glass of 
a peculiar fluid, which produced the desired effect. When asked 
whether he often had such cases, he replied: ' Why, bless you, sir, 
we have often twenty cases a day.' This is denounced as a dis- 
graceful state of affairs, in view of the fact that the roads can easily 
be ventilated by the erection of large fans."— Sun. 

"The following resolution recently adopted by the Bar Associa- 
tion was yesterday received by President Chandler, of the Board 
of Health : 

"'That the Board of Health and the Commissioner of Public 



35 2 VENTILATION AND HEALTH, 

system of ventilation which I believe is essentially 
new, and for which I could have obtained a patent 
right if so disposed, and perhaps ought to have done 

Works are requested to examine into the defective ventilation and 
heating in the Court-house of the city of New York and the best 
way of remedying the same, and to give this committee an oppor- 
tunity to confer with them on the subject/ 

" It is doubtful whether the tribunal which the Bar Association 
here invokes in the matter has jurisdiction over it. But it is clear 
that some authority should at once interfere to save all the judges, 
many of the bar, and a large number of witnesses and jurors from 
some of these Calcutta Black Holes which are denominated court- 
rooms. Already Judge Robinson has fallen a victim to the pois- 
oned atmosphere he breathed for years without a murmur, and 
Chief-Justice Davis has recently been at the very portals of death 
from the same cause. Justices Speir and Sanford, of the Superior 
Court, are well known to be more or less, suffering from the same 
cause. The atmosphere of the Sessions Court could not ordinarily 
be savory in any building; but in its present quarters this atmos- 
phere is at times positively nauseating. Recorder Hackett suc- 
cumbed to it after twelve years of its breathing, and Judge Gilder- 
sleeve has nearly died with the poison which affected his throat 
and lungs. Probably when a few more judges die the Court-house 
Commissioners will be empowered by the Legislature to adopt 
some sanitary reforms in ventilating the court-rooms, which may 
result in preserving the lives of the remaining judges." — World. 

" Speaking of Judge Robinson's lingering illness, Judge Daly 
had no doubt whatever that he had fallen a victim to the foul at- 
mosphere of the badly- ventilated Court-house. ' Judge Monell was 
killed in the same way,' said he, * and Judges Curtis and Sanford, 
of the Superior Court, and Chief- Justice Davis, of the Supreme 
Court, are all laid up at present from the same cause. As for my- 
self, I am not well either. I have stood the wretched atmosphere 
for a good many years, and may stand it for some time to come. 
Judge Robinson left the city a year ago, broken down in health, 
and made a trip to San Francisco. The first time that he resumed 
his place on the bench after his return he fainted and had to be 
carried home. I think it is about time that the Board of Health 
took some action in regard to the dangerous condition of our Court- 
house. They pretend to have some system of ventilation, but I 
believe that, taking all things into account, our court-room is about 
the worst one in the world. In the old court-room, which we oc- 
cupied in the City Hall before the new Court-house was built, I 
devised a simple plan of ventilation myself and got along very 
well. But where we are at present we have to stand the foul air 
till it becomes insufferable and then we pull down the windows and 
let the cold air sweep in over us, thus inviting one danger to take 
the place of another.' ' =— /£, 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 353 

so to facilitate its introduction. When people pay a 
handsome fee or royalty for anything they appreciate 
it more highly. But I have given it freely to the 
public. 

Throughout this country, and we may say through- 
out the English-speaking population of the world, 
pulmonary diseases carry off from, one tenth to one 
fourth of the entire people. 

A large portion of this mortality is due to the scrof- 
ulous diathesis and to a lowered vitality — a deficiency 
of the red elements of the blood — which renders the 
individual liable to the albuminoid deposit called 
tubercle, which, taking place in the lungs, ends in 
pulmonary consumption when the tubercles soften. 

The chief atmospheric cause of pulmonary consump- 
tion, or rather the sole cause in popular estimation, 
is the impurity of the atmosphere, caused by carbonic 
acid, animal exhalations, and filth. But in jail these 
causes operate more on other organs than the lungs. 
Carbonic acid causes a general lowering of vitality 
and depression of the nervous system; malarious ema- 
nations affect the liver, spleen, and alimentary canal; 
putrescent exhalations develop fevers; carburetted hy- 
drogen produces softening of the brain and paralysis; 
sewer gas produces diphtheria and a variety of zy- 
motic diseases. 

Imperfect ventilation, therefore, affects other organs 
more than the lungs, but in all cases it produces a 
great impairment of health, and is alone sufficient to 
make a school destructive to the physical and moral 
constitution of the pupils. 

But the most serious diseases of the lungs, aside 
from the localization of scrofula in tubercles, are due 
to other causes which operate locally, and which have 
almost escaped the attention of the medical profession 
— causes which directly depress the vitality of the 
lungs, and do not, like malaria, enter the blood and 
derange the nervous system. These causes are found 
in a cold, negative atmosphere — the source of colds, 
catarrhs, consumption, and pneumonia, according to 
the circumstances of the case — and they are often 



354 VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

brought into play with dangerous or fatal effect by 
the means adopted for procuring ventilation; for 
while society is well instructed in the effects of impure 
air on the general health, scarcely anything has been 
said of the effects of negative air upon the lungs. 

By negative air I mean air deprived of the animating 
qualities derived from the sunshine, which is the im- 
mediate maintenance of all vegetable and animal life. 
Such air is found in underground habitations or cel- 
lars, and in the winds blowing over a large extent of 
country which is deficient in sunshine. On some days 
in the winter the atmosphere is so intensely negative 
from this cause as to produce an extreme depression 
not only of the lungs, but of all the powers of life in 
delicate persons who find it necessary to remain in- 
doors, but cannot even by that means escape a depres- 
sive effect. 

The positive and negative conditions of the atmos- 
phere depend riot only on the presence or absence of 
the sunshine, but on the conditions in which the effect 
of this presence or absence is intensified or accumu- 
lated. The presence of the sunshine develops vegeta- 
tion and flowers, which add to its beneficent effects on 
the atmosphere, as its absence leaves them to die and de- 
cay, producing a large amount of malaria. The presence 
of the sunshine produces a large amount of evapora- 
tion, in which its imponderable forces are carried into 
the atmosphere in vapors and clouds, producing bril- 
liant electric displays, and bringing a refreshing influ- 
ence to plants as these vapors and clouds return in 
dew and rain. Expansion by evaporation absorbs all 
the sun brings and condensation of the vapors back to 
water liberates what had been absorbed. 

Condensation still further, in freezing, liberates still 
more, and produces thereby a delightful effect on the 
atmosphere, which we realize on frosty mornings and 
whenever the cold, muddy surface of the earth is 
changed by a general freeze, or when the falling snow 
relieves the previous negative chilliness of the air 
which is so disagreeable to nervous, rheumatic per- 
sons. 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 355 

When these processes are reversed and the impon- 
derable elements absorbed the effect is depressing. 
The atmosphere in days when it is thawing is ex- 
tremely disagreeable, and to stand or walk in the thaw- 
ing mud and snow is very unwholesome to delicate 
persons. The March winds blowing over the thawing 
ice of our lakes or the icebergs of the Atlantic are 
quite unwholesome and unpleasant — an abundant 
cause of catarrhs and pulmonary affections. 

Evaporation rapidly absorbs caloric and its associ- 
ates, leaving a cold, negative condition, and if this 
evaporation proceeds in the absence of sunshine it 
produces a very negative condition. Hence all damp 
or wet places unrelieved by sunshine are injurious to 
the lungs, developing bronchial, consumptive, and asth- 
matic diseases.* A wet soil near a residence is espe- 
cially injurious, and a frequent cause of rheumatic 
troubles. Damp cellars are dangerous habitations, 
and wet walls or floors are sure to affect the lungs of 
those who inhabit the apartments. In the open coun- 
try the communication with a moving atmosphere 
warmed by the sun moderates these effects, but in 
closed apartments void of sunshine they become in- 
tense. Even in the open country, however, an intensely 
negative state may arise from the absence of sunshine 

* The London Telegraph says that the great fog which Tasted with 
few intermissions from November, 1879, to February, 1880, enor- 
mously increased the death rate. Asthma was especially increased 
in its fatality. When the fog was severe, in the middle of Decem- 
ber, the deaths from asthma were increased 43 per cent above the 
average. When the fog abated, or nearly disappeared, in Janu- 
ary, during three weeks the deaths by asthma fell to 30 per cent 
below the average. But when the fog returned with increased den- 
sity at the last of January and first week of February, the deaths 
from asthma rose to 220 per cent above the average and fell again 
to a low figure when the fog disappeared. All other lung diseases 
were aggravated during the fog period, but none showed so marked 
an effect as asthma. Never was there a better experiment to show 
the deadly effect on the atmosphere of excluding sunlight. 
Houses and manufactories which greatly exclude the light are 
known to be unhealthy; but their effects are not so injurious to the 
lungs, because they obtain a healthy atmosphere from surrounding 
sunlit locations. 



35 6 VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

when there is no condensation in the form of rain, 
snow, or ice, and a steady evaporation from the soil. 

Owing to these causes the air of close-shaded apart- 
ments never penetrated by the sun or ventilated is 
quite negative and unwholesome. It can be made 
tolerable only by free ventilation, drawing in a better 
air from sunshiny regions. But there is less need of 
fresh air in an apartment (not crowded) into which the 
sun shines freely, and school-rooms should always have 
a free exposure to the sun in seasons when the heat 
does not forbid. In addition to thus vitalizing the air 
and apartment, it should have the benefit of vegetation 
by potted plants or beds of plants and vines under 
the windows. The odors of mint, thyme, and sage, 
evergreens and eucalyptus* are especially beneficial by 
evolving ozone in the atmosphere which is destructive 
of malaria. A similar influence is exerted by a simple 
ozone apparatus, consisting of a stick of phosphorus 
suspended by a wire in a jar of water so as to be 
drawn out of the water in proportion as we wish to 
increase the generation of ozone and immersed in the 
water when we wish to check it. This may not be the 
best method of developing ozone, as it diffuses the 
oxydated phosphorus, but it is certainly beneficial in 
an impure atmosphere, though it may be objectionable 
if used too freely. 

School-rooms should never be placed near any 
sources of malaria, and if such exist in the vicinity 
there might be a partial protection by surrounding 
the school-house with wholesome vegetation. The 
sunflower has a reputation as an antagonist to ma- 
laria, and the eucalyptus tree is still more effective. 
As malaria emanates from the soil and also settles 
upon the ground at night, the school-room should 

* The groves of eucalyptus planted in 1868 in one of the most pesti- 
lential spots of Italy, the vicinity of the Fontane convent, near 
Rome, made it a healthy place in five years. Similar experiments 
have had similar results in Algeria, in Alsace and Lorraine. The 
eucalyptus becomes a large tree in five or six years. It is not 
adapted to northern climates, but might be preserved by a suf- 
ficient winter covering for its roots, 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 357 

never be near the surface of the earth, but should have 
at least ten feet of elevation. Its best location is in 
the second or third story, thus avoiding that lower 
stratum of air which is so often in negative and ma- 
larious conditions. Where the soil around the school- 
house is not paved or covered with grass it would be 
kept in a wholesome condition by sprinkling it with 
iron in the form of iron filings, iron rust, or scraps of 
old iron or copperas (which is the sulphate of iron). 
Iron in all forms is a great antiseptic. 

Another precaution against an unwholesome atmos- 
phere may be necessary in winter, when the external 
cold renders the air very dry by freezing. This dry- 
ness is injurious to the lungs, but in the open air the 
stimulating effect of a cold but positive atmosphere 
rouses the moistening secretions of the air passages 
and prevents injury. But when the general atmos- 
phere is negative as well as dry the secretions are sup- 
pressed and the effect is very injurious. The unwhole- 
some dryness of the external air is aggravated when 
it is warmed in the house, for air at 70 is relatively 
drier than at 20 ; that is, it is farther from saturation 
with moisture, and has far greater evaporative and 
dessicative power. This excessive evaporation from 
the lungs is a depressing process to vitality, increas- 
ing the irritability and checking the secretions. Even 
the skin (as tested in cases of small-pox) is far more 
irritable in a dry atmosphere deprived of the soothing 
influences of moisture. Hence when the lungs or 
bronchial passages are inflamed nothing is more sooth- 
ing than the free diffusion of watery vapor in the air. 
A boiling kettle giving off steam in the apartment 
will give relief when medicine cannot. Hence in 
cold, dry weather, especially if cloudy, a pan of water 
on the stove continually evaporating produces a most 
beneficent influence, and if it simmers gently will not 
produce too much moisture. The addition of sugar or 
liquorice to the water of the pan will render it still more 
soothing and pleasant. The sugar-houses of Louisiana 
have been favorite resorts for persons of diseased lungs 
when the boiling of the cane-juice was in progress. 



358 VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

These general conditions and causes are, however, 
rather the predisposing than the developing causes of 
pulmonary disease. The exciting cause is almost in- 
variably an irritation developed by an atmospheric 
cause in the lungs, or a congestion. of the lungs caused 
the impression of cold on the surface, driving the 
blood congestively inward when the vital forces are 
too feeble to resist the attack. 

The development of this local irritation is generally 
called " catching a cold," and the severity of this process 
or its repetition lays the foundation for formidable 
diseases. 

But what is " catching a cold "? I think we shall 
look in vain through our medical literature for any 
real explanation of this familiar occurrence, which is 
the foundation of much of our pulmonary pathology. 

In my own experience, having delicate lungs, the 
mystery of "catching a cold" was provocative of in- 
vestigation, and as it had not been explained I eagerly 
sought its conditions and causes. 

I soon found that the influence of external cold had 
little to do with it unless locally applied, or unless the 
cold should be so overpowering as to cause congestion 
of the lungs and endanger pneumonia. But the petty 
irritation called a cold, which is sometimes aggravated 
into bronchitis or pneumonia, does not arise in that 
way. It is continually occurring to persons who have 
not the slightest idea how the cold was caught. I 
soon found by personal experience that it arose chiefly 
from draughts of cold negative air coming into a warmer 
apartment. If the subject were placed in the line of 
such a draught from a door or window he must be hardy 
if he escapes a cold, especially if it strikes his feet, 
legs, shoulders, arms, or back, or goes directly to his 
breathing organs. 

The cold produced by the current striking the per- 
son extensively is easily understood by the deranging 
effect of cold in driving the circulation inwards. But 
a general application of cold to the surface is not the 
most efficient or most frequent cause. A current of 
cold air striking the legs, arms, shoulders, or upper 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH 359 

part of back is very certain to develop a cold in the 
lungs, according to those laws of nervous relation 
which constitute the science of Sarcognomy, which 
would be too extensive a theme for illustration at 
present. The cold produced by inhaling an atmos- 
phere in which a streak of cold air is mixed with one 
of higher temperature is not so easily explained. 
This, however, is the fact established by my own ex- 
perience. An atmosphere homogeneous as to its tem- 
perature and electrical conditions is essential to the 
health of the lungs, and every departure from this 
condition I have found to be dangerous. The crack 
which lets in a supply of cold air to the apartment in 
which I sit is so noxious in its effects that I cannot sit 
long without feeling it and knowing that I am being 
injured, no matter where the crack may be. 

The open door or window produces no such effect. 
It must be a narrow passage to be truly dangerous. 
Hence the majority of apartments heated by open 
fires are very uncomfortable to my lungs — the smaller 
the apartment the more noxious, as in a large apart- 
ment the effect is more diffused and does not neces- 
sarily affect all parts of the room. 

Either the inequality of temperature in the air as 
we inhale it produces an irritative impression on the 
lungs, as a similar inequality might affect the hand in 
handling solid bodies (and would probably cause in- 
flammation or soreness), or the air passing through 
the crack is deteriorated and reduced to a more nega- 
tive condition, which makes it depressive or irritative 
to the delicate pulmonary organs. Both suppositions 
are probably true. 

Homogeneous impressions are necessary to health. 
If cold air strikes my legs I acquire a cold, but if my 
whole body had been surrounded by the same cold 
air no harm would have been done. Inequality is the 
cause of the mischief. This inequality is much more 
injurious to the delicate sensibilities of the lungs; 
hence the heterogeneous atmosphere produced by thin 
strata of cold air rushing into a warm apartment is just 
the kind of irritation which most promptly produces 



3^0 VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

a cold. At a sufficient distance from the crack by which 
the cold air enters no effect is felt, the air having be- 
come homogeneous. 

I observed that if the narrow passage through which 
the air entered was damp or wet the effect was greatly 
aggravated; or if the air entered through a damp 
apartment with wet walls, or over a floor recently 
washed and not yet dry, the effect was very injurious 
and intolerable. 

In this case, however, the irritative effect of blowing 
through a crack was not necessary to the mischief; a 
wet place on the wall or floor of the apartment or of 
the adjoining apartment through which the air entered 
was sufficient to produce a cold without any other 
agency. And although it did not produce a cold the 
reception of air from cellars or underground apart- 
ments produced a disagreeable, depressing effect on 
the lungs which satisfied me that it might in the end 
produce pulmonary consumption, which often occurs 
in underground apartments and in houses in which 
the cellar air enters the chambers — a view which I ex- 
pressed in my essay on " Consumption and Archi- 
tecture.'' 

The noxious character of the air passing over sur- 
faces reduced to a highly negative condition by long 
evaporation is a conspicuous fact. In the open air, 
the wet earth moist with rain, or the foliage of plants, 
has not so great an effect by evaporation, for it is in 
free communication with the inexhaustible sources of 
electric supply. Yet even in the open air wet evap- 
orating spots are known to be productive of rheuma- 
tism and pulmonary diseases. But in a close apart- 
ment evaporation produces an intensely negative con- 
dition, which has a deadly effect upon the lungs. To 
sleep in an apartment in which clothing has been 
hung up to dry has endangered or destroyed many a 
life. But to sleep in an apartment which has recently 
been plastered is an experiment which is universally 
known to be dangerous to life. Not until some time 
after the walls have appeared to be perfectly dry 
would any prudent person occupy such a room, if the 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH, 36 1 

architect would consent. To sleep in damp sheets is 
another dangerous operation, not only to the lungs, 
but to the nervous system, endangering rheumatism 
or fever.* If the floor or walls of an apartment are 
wet, the only safety is to open doors and windows 
when we occupy it and let the wind blow through. 
Damp apartments, damp floors or walls, damp cloth- 
ing, and blowing cracks are thus the chief sources of 
pulmonary irritations and colds which are often 
dangerous, as well as rheumatisms. Underground 
apartments are therefore unwholesome and ought to 
be prohibited, for they are almost inevitably damp and 
negative. Dwellings in Louisville were formerly built 
with basements for servants, but experience showed 
that the doctor's bill was fearfully increased. The 
blowing cracks seem never to have been suspected of 
their deadly power, which is coextensive with the open 
fireplace — we might almost say coextensive with civil- 
ization and cold climates. 

The stove is not so injurious in this way, because it 
consumes less air and causes a less active blowing 
crack; but as every bushel of coal requires at least 
25,000 cubic feet of air for its combustion the fire 
which burns only a bushel a day drags 25,000 cubic 
feet of air through the cracks, and if burnt in an open 
fireplace, probably forty or fifty thousand feet. In an 
apartment twelve feet square and ten feet high this 
would change the whole air about thirty times, or in one 
of fifteen feet square about twenty times. The air of 
the room at 65 or 75 is thus continually mingled in 
winter with a large amount just entered at 20 to 30 
— a mixture highly irritative to the lungs, even if the 
cold air coming in had not been rendered more nega- 
tive and irritative by friction in the cracks as it 
entered. 

I am inclined to believe that the friction of the crack 

* Sleeping in damp sheets which have become highly negative by 
evaporation for hours is very different from resting in wet 
sheets just taken from the water and surrounded by blankets to re- 
strain evaporation. 



362 VENTILATION AND HEALTH, 

gives the negative and irritative character to the air, 
for it is highly irritative to the lungs, even when the 
person is too far from the crack to be much affected 
by its mere coldness. The whole apartment is un- 
healthily irritating to the lungs, and there is no escape 
from the mischief but in opening a door or window 
sufficiently wide to give free access of air and stop 
the friction. Hence it is well known that our primi- 
tive log cabins, the doors of which are seldom shut, and 
which admit air freely between the logs and under the 
clapboards, are healthier than many of our city houses. 
Hunters and soldiers who sleep in the open air under 
a tree or an open tent never take cold until they come 
back to civilized houses, which are generally crack- 
blowers. To put an end to this dangerous crack-blow- 
ing should be a leading object in every system of ven- 
tilation; but it seems to have been entirely overlooked, 
and in some plans of ventilation it is terribly aggra- 
vated — making the ventilation dangerous to the health 
of all who are subjected to it. 

Rational ventilation should give us pure air, and air 
that is not injuriously negative. It should abolish 
crack-blowing, cold draughts, dust, stench, and accumu- 
lated exhalations from the body. 

The existence of a highly deleterious atmospheric 
condition, which I call negative, and which is the chief 
external cause of pulmonary disease, has been regularly 
overlooked by medical authors. Exactly what this con- 
dition is I have not attempted to discover, but feel 
justified in applying the term negative, as it arises 
from the absence of sunshine and the absorption of 
caloric in evaporation and in thawing. That evapora- 
tion carries off electricity as well as caloric is shown 
by the experiment of throwing water into a heated 
crucible or on the coals of a chafing dish, in which 
case the steam arising is positive. The vapors rising 
from the earth carry off so much as to cause the vast 
accumulation in the clouds which is discharged in 
lightning. 

The condensation of vapor to rain, and of water to ice, 
emancipates this caloric and electricity, and hence the 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 363 

polar regions which condense and freeze, but never 
thaw, have the vast accumulation displayed in the 
aurora borealis. 

To overcome the evils described would be proper 
ventilation, and there is but one perfect system of 
ventilation — that which removes all the foul air and 
supplies a pure positive air in its place, homogeneous 
with that of the apartment. 

The open fireplace is an efficient ventilator. It 
carries off the air rapidly, and chiefly the colder air 
which is in the lower strata. But this ventilation ne- 
cessitates the entrance of cold air, which comes in rap- 
id currents through every crack and keyhole, endan- 
gering the health of every one whom they strike or 
who inhales them before they are well mixed with the 
warm air. Generally there is a crack under the door 
and a rapid stream of cold air blowing along the floor, 
chilling the feet and ankles and raising the dust off 
the carpet. The ventilation by the fireplace is gener- 
ally sufficient in amount, but it is dangerous to the 
inmates who are near the doors and windows, for 
streams of cold air blowing into a warm room will 
produce colds, or at least keep up a morbidly irritable 
condition of the lungs, which lays the foundation for 
consumption, bronchitis, or pneumonia. 

If, however, all these openings are carefully closed — 
paper pasted over the cracks and rubber strips applied 
to the doors — air must be received in some way, the 
30,000 feet must be forced in, and if the room is too 
tightly sealed the little cracks must blow in so much 
the faster, or else the smoke is not carried off and the 
room is full of carbonic acid. As air must be sup- 
plied, the best way is to have a pipe of sheet-iron or 
thin cast-iron, or, better still, copper, through which 
the pure air may enter, placed in the chimney so as 
to keep it hot and heat the incoming air, which should 
enter back of the fire, ascend, and be discharged close 
to the ceiling, thus filling the upper part of the room 
with fresh air while the impure is drawn off below. 
This pipe or these pipes (for there may be several) 
should be of a flattened or elliptic form, and coming 



364 VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

in from without should enter above the fire and pass 
up the chimney to the height of the ceiling, where they 
discharge their pure warm air. This arrangement is 
cheap and secures a good draught through the air-pipes. 
It would be better, however, to have the outside pipe 
extend up some distance to get purer air if it does not 
open near the mouth of the chimney. Another im- 
portant improvement is to have it draw its supply of 
air through a box in which are from five to ten dia- 
phragms of netting to intercept all the dust of the at- 
mosphere, and thus not only keep our lungs clean, 
but keep a vast amount of dirt from our faces and 
hands, clothes, books and papers, and keep off the 
dust that settles on the floor, which is continually swept 
up and shaken up into the air to be breathed over and 
over. A ventilating company in England uses wool 
or cotton for this purpose. A still better plan is to 
fill the box or pipe with charcoal, and in unhealthy 
seasons with disinfectants. A single pipe one by 
twelve inches, with the draught of a good chimney thirty 
feet high, and a fire sufficient for such an apartment, 
would supply an ample amount of air for an apart- 
ment with forty or fifty persons, without exposing 
them to any cold draughts whatever, thus preventingthe 
catching of colds and giving an equable temperature to 
the whole apartment, except immediately at the win- 
dows, besides effecting a considerable economy of fuel 
in saving much of the heat of the smoke in the chim- 
ney, so as to render an open grate almost as economi- 
cal and as cheap as a stove.* 

* A steam or gas-pipe two inches in diameter would be sufficient 
to furnish warm air to ordinary apartments, and one of three inches 
to apartments of larger size. I make this suggestion with a view 
to economy and simplicity of construction. The pipe should as- 
cend behind the grate, in the open flue, and the builder should 
leave a three-inch space in the front wall of the flue free from 
bricks, filled with mortar, through which the pipe might be inserted 
and removed in case it needed any repair or cleaning. Such a 
pipe would answer the purpose of safe ventilation, but would not 
bring in as warm air as the one above mentioned. 

Since the above was written an improvement has been introduced 
by the " Open Stove Ventilating Company," which may be seen 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 



36S 



The same object may be accomplished in a less sci- 
entific and economical manner, whether we use a fire- 
place or a stove, by simply making a few small open- 
ings near the ceiling, such as narrow slits a foot long 
(or even gimlet holes, if sufficiently numerous), which 
should be directed upwards so as to have the air strike 
the ceiling and mingle with the warmest air of the 
apartment, which will be found above the stove and 
stove pipe or near the chimney flue. The mixture 
would become homogeneous before it reached the 
lungs of the inmates, especially if these openings were 
above the stove. 

The same purpose may also be attained by causing 
a fresh-air pipe to be brought in so as to play against 
the stove or stove pipe, or through a shield incasing 
them, which would perfectly prevent cold draughts 
and procure some additional economy of fuel. 




These methods are cheap and effective when the 
draught of the stove or fireplace carries a sufficient 
amount of air, but they do not constitute a perfect ven- 
tilation, although good enough to satisfy most persons, 
and prevent any condition that would be considered 
offensive or unwholesome except in a very crowded 
apartment. 

at 78 Beekman Street, New York, called a " portable air warming 
grate." It differs from the ordinary grate by an arrangement for 
introducing fresh air which is heated behind the grate and enters 
the apartment above the grate, thus solving very satisfactorily the 
problem of supplying abundant fresh air in a comfortable and health- 
ful condition. The same principle has been successfully applied by 
the company to stoves. 



366 VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

When, in addition to this natural ventilation by the 
power of the chimney, we provide special ventilating 
flues or ventiducts, we do not always accomplish any- 
thing better. 

Too much ventilation is as dangerous and injurious 
as too little, sometimes much more injurious, and many 
persons who are not sufficiently sensitive or observant 
to realize the effects of cold draughts do a great deal 
of mischief by indulging a passion for ventilation. It 
is very common for such persons in a railroad car to 
open wide a window and inflict a cold draught upon 
those sitting behind them when there is no occasion 
whatever for such an act of rudeness. It is often 
dangerous for a person of delicate health to travel in 
a car in winter, as, on account of this reckless pro- 
pensity, a comfortable and regular temperature can- 
not be maintained. 

I recollect entering a fashionable hall in the inte- 
rior of the State of New York, the owner of which had 
once been a lecturer on physiology, and having the 
usual loose exaggerated notions about the impor- 
tance of ventilation, his building was so flooded w T ith 
currents of cold air as to make it unsafe for any one 
not pretty hardy to sit in it for an evening. After try- 
ing several times to find a safe and wholesome posi- 
tion in it I was obliged to give up visiting it entirely. 
A distinguished English lecturer having occupied it I 
asked his experience, and he poured out a bitter de- 
nunciation of the too well-ventilated hall.* 



* We have reached that period of the year when it is scarcely an 
exaggeration to say that the unreasoning stupidity of those who 
control places of entertainment of all kinds is sending many peo- 
ple to their graves. On Monday, say, the thermometer happens 
to reach 90 ; so everything in the shape of door or window is very 
properly thrown open. On Tuesday the mercury goes no higher 
than 8o°; on Wednesday it falls at the same hour to 65 ; but, nev- 
ertheless, in many places door and window remain precisely as on 
Monday. Indeed, instances might be cited in which movable sky- 
lights, rolled off at a temperature of 90 , remained in that plight at 
6o°. No wonder, then, that we hear of shockingly rapid deaths by 
pneumonia. A few days ago a gentleman who did not desire to 
commit suicide left a large restaurant, where he had intended to 



< 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 367 

The sciolism which demands an excessive introduc- 
tion of cold air into apartments, and supposes that an 
adult with 500 cubic feet of air would die of suffoca- 
tion in 10 hours, is found in medical and scientific as 
well as popular writings. In that excellent manual 
" A Practical Treatise on Heat," by Thomas Box, which 
is generally very accurate, it is stated that an adult 
requires as a minimum 215 cubic feet of air per hour, 
and that "for prisons, workhouses, etc., it should be 
not less than 350, and for hospitals 1000 feet per hour 
per head." 

To sustain these exaggerated estimates he claims 
28 cubic feet per hour for respiration (which would 
be required only by those engaged in active physical 
exertion) and then adds the fanciful estimate of 187 
cubic feet to receive the vapor exhaled. Yet as the 
vapor exhaled from the lungs is carried by the expired 
5ir, it is entirely gratuitous to affirm that six times as 
much more air must be added to carry what is already 
carried. The average cutaneous exhalation (from an 
ounce to an ounce and a half per hour) would be re- 
ceived at the temperature of the body by from 30 to 
50 cubic feet of air. But the air thus moistened by 
cutaneous exhalation is not thereby deprived of oxygen 
or made unfit for breathing. Nor is the air which has 
once been expired entirely unfit to be breathed again. 
The respiration consumes only about one fourth of 
the oxygen of the respired air, and in ordinary respi- 
ration we inhale a portion of our own expired air at 



dine, because there was not a solitary seat in it which was out of a 
thorough draught. This month of May is the most fickle and dan- 
gerous in the whole year. — N. Y. Times, May, 1881. 

These extravagant notions have been encouraged by the medical 
profession and writers on hygiene. A medical journal lately de- 
manded 3000 cubic feet per hour as necessary for each individ- 
ual ! The amount of air actually breathed by the lungs of an aver- 
age adult is from ten to fifteen cubic feet per hour. If during the 
hour he should be supplied with one twentieth of the amount 
claimed, say 150 feet, he could have breathed or contaminated only 
one tenth of it. If by proximate ventilation his own expired air 
had been removed, and fifteen feet of good air returned, his ven- 
tilation would be perfect. 



368 VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

each inhalation and feel no inconvenience therefrom. 
To demand 215, 350 or 1000 feet of air per hour as 
necessary to breathe is an absurd and unscientific de- 
mand, arising entirely from the difficulty of securing 
any proper ventilation by the inefficient distal methods 
which have been in vogue. Instead of requiring 200, 
300 or 1000 feet per hour, the most careful experi- 
ments of physiologists show that the lungs discharge 
in respiration from 250 to 350 cubic feet in twenty-four 
hours. The largest estimate, that of Valentin, was 
not quite 400 feet. From 10 to 15 cubic feet per hour 
is therefore the actual requirement for adult lungs, 
and even if less than this should be supplied, requiring 
the air to a small extent to be breathed more than 
once, the consequences would not be important. 

With pure and cleanly surroundings the injury to 
health which we may receive from our own expired 
air is very trivial indeed, compared to what we may 
suffer from unchanged or uncleanly clothing and from 
the morbid exhalations of others. Close association 
with persons of impaired health and sleeping within 
the range of malarious exhalations are matters of far 
more serious detriment than the limited supply of 
good air. 

The excessive introduction of external air demanded 
by a false theory would be harmless if it were brought 
in from a pure locality, and brought to the tempera- 
ture of the apartment before introducing it by pass- 
ing through a heater or playing against a stove and 
ascending with its hot current. 

The ventiducts, which carry off the air and make a 
demand for more, should be placed so as to be as near 
as practicable to the persons in the apartment, and it 
would be better to distribute them through the apart- 
ment than to confine them to the walls or the corners. 

When a stove is used, the opening of the ventiduct 
should not be close to the ceiling, for that would carry 
off the hot air from the stove as fast as generated. 
But with an open fireplace the ventiduct may be placed 
at the ceiling, for the breath at 98 and the moisture 
it contains would be found to accumulate at the ceil- 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 369 

ing, as the temperature of the apartment generally 
would not be over 65 . If, however, there is a supply 
of hot air from a register or a stove, which of course 
goes to the ceiling, the ventiduct opening should be 
placed three or four feet below the ceiling and as far as 
convenient from the supply of hot air. A smaller open- 
ing should be made immediately at the floor to carry 
off any heavy gases or dust. Even in the cleanest 
apartments the stratum of air on the floor is more or 
less impure and at least dusty. Where spitting is 
practised it is filthy and malarious ; besides, it is the 
coldest air, and should be removed on that account to 
make a comfortable place for the feet. I would there- 
fore recommend as a general rule an opening two or 
three feet below the ceiling and another at the floor. 

Ventiducts should not be large. The smaller and 
more numerous the better. Square-inch openings or 
slits scattered around the room are better than large 
apertures. A slit the eighth or sixteenth of an inch 
wide and ten or twenty feet long horizontally is a good 
arrangement near the ceiling or along the level of the 
floor, sucking up the dust and the cold air falling from 
the windows below and the foul air above. 

Ventiducts running up 20 or 30 feet will discharge 
the air freely if it has a free admission, as from a fur- 
nace or any free opening, but if counteracted in a close 
apartment by the draught of a fire-place or stove 
their effect is nullified until a door or window is 
opened, or some aperture for ventilation. 

If ventiducts are introduced into a stove-heated 
room there should be a very free admission of fresh 
air playing against the stove or stove pipe to enable 
the ventiduct to draw, for it cannot draw air from a 
perfectly close room. Or the fresh air may be drawn 
in through fine apertures near the ceiling. Where 
this is arranged I would recommend ventiducts as 
good ventilators for such rooms with their chief open- 
ings at three or four feet below the ceiling, with an 
opening at the floor level. 

None of these ventiduct arrangements, however, are 
accurately and scientifically adapted to the purposes 



370 VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

of ventilation; nor have I ever seen or heard of a plan 
which effects its objects perfectly; though either of the 
plans mentioned will render an apartment satisfactory 
to most of its inmates, unless it contains more than a 
score of occupants. 

The plans, however, are all faulty in this, that their 
ventilation is imperfect because the exhalations from 
the persons in the apartment are not promptly re- 
moved so as to keep the air pure. The breath and 
perspiration of persons and smoke of the lights should 
be promptly removed, but all systems of ventilation 
of which I have heard allow these exhalations to dif- 
fuse through the air, and propose only to remove the 
entire air of the apartment with such contamination as it 
may have had instead of removing the contaminating gases. 

This system of ventilation is much like the ventila- 
tion of a savage hut, in which the smoke is not carried 
off by itself, as in the chimney of a city residence, but 
contaminates the whole air of the hut, with which it 
passes off at a hole in the roof. If we could see the 
breath, the aqueous vapor, and the lamp-smoke in one 
of these supposed to be well-ventilated rooms, we 
should see something much like the murky air of the 
savage wigwams. Every pupil in a school would be 
surrounded by a cloud of his own breath and exhala- 
tions, which he w r ould be breathing all the time, and 
where the gas is burning the upper strata would be 
full of carbonic acid and aqueous vapors, not to men- 
tion the impurities of the gas. If a somewhat purer 
air is found within two feet of the floor it is contami- 
nated with the dust and odors of the floor. 

If each boy in the public school were sprinkled with 
the tincture of assafcetida, benzine, or bisulphide of 
carbon, the exhalations from them would be small in 
amount compared to the natural exhalations from his 
person, but, being more obvious to the senses, they 
would be utterly intolerable under the best system of 
ventilation that has ever been put in operation. 

If the inventors of ventilating plans would go di- 
rect to their aim they might ventilate an apartment 
so well that its filthiest inmates could hardly annoy 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH, Z7 l 

any one, and even a small-pox patient might be harm- 
less to those a few feet removed; but such ventilation 
as this has not been thought of for the school-room. 

Such ventilation, however, is entirely practicable — 
ventilation which would purify the most crowded rooms 
which now offend the senses and endanger the health. 

Such ventilation must go directly to its object; and 
as the flue of a chimney removes the smoke before it 
has contaminated the air of the apartment — as a sewer- 
pipe removes foul liquids before they contaminate the 
air — so a system of ventilation, instead of exhausting 
the entire air of an apartment to take out a trifle of 
carbonic acid gas, instead of waiting until the car- 
bonic acid is diffused through the whole mass and 
breathed by all the inmates, instead of keeping them 
in an air contaminated by breath and perspiration, 
which is not purified, but only diluted by pouring in 
fresh air, and never entirely pure— would draw off di- 
rectly the impure air with as little as possible of the 
pure before the impurities have diffused themselves 
throughout the whole from ceiling to floor, as they do 
rapidly by the law of diffusion of gases. 

If we carry off this, the impure air, as a chimney 
carries off smoke, not allowing it time for diffusion, 
we attain the beau ideal of ventilation. I do not pro- 
pose exactly to carry out the figure by attaching a 
funnel or flue to the nose of each breathing biped, 
making each one discharge into his own separate 
chimney. T propose simply to connect the ventiduct 
or the flue of the fireplace or stove with the locality 
where the impure air is generated, instead of drawing 
upon the whole apartment equally, to draw from the 
contaminated portions. 

If we establish minute ventiduct openings at the 
desk of each pupil in a school-room in the midst of 
the gases he is discharging, these gases will be taken 
up into the ventiduct and removed before mingling 
with the atmosphere generally.* 

* A very cheap and simple method of ventilation was suggested 
by a writer in trie New England Journal of Education : " I know 



37 2 VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

If the principle were perfectly carried out by attach- 
ing a pipe to the breathing organs of each individual 
the amount of air to be removed for perfect ventila- 
tion would be about 10 or 12 cubic feet per hour per 
capita; but if we allow these 10 or 12 cubic feet of 
respired air to mingle thoroughly with the adjacent 
atmosphere it will be necessary to remove from twenty 
to thirty times as much to establish good ventilation, 
and even then the ventilation would be imperfect. 
The contaminated atmosphere would be removed in 
the first stages of contamination, but the individual 
would all the time be breathing that vitiated atmos- 
phere instead of a pure one. The respiration of pure 
air in a crowded apartment — air almost as fresh as the 
mountain breeze — can be enjoyed only when all con- 
tamination is promptly removed before diffusion. This 
cannot be done by the system of general ventilation 
heretofore in vogue, for such ventilation, operating at 
the sides of the apartment, carries off not the foul air, 
but an average specimen of the air of the whole apart- 
ment — from twenty to fifty feet of air for every foot 
of contaminated air. 

If the structure of the apartment allows 250 cubic 
feet to each inmate (as when an apartment 20 feet 
square and 10 feet high has 16 inmates), the necessary 
ventilation, according to common estimates, would be 

of no better mode of ventilating old buildings than the simple, inex- 
pensive one of fitting a board tightly across the bottom of the win- 
dow, some eight or ten inches wide and two or three inches from the 
sash, on the inside. The lower sash is then raised without causing 
a draught of air upon the scholars while the pure air is entering at 
the bottom and middle of the window. I have seen this tried suc- 
cessfully with every window of a school-room — eight in all — thus 
raised, to a greater or less extent, through every session, and dur- 
ing the entire winter season, without a single scholar taking cold 
therefrom. The room was 28 by 32 by 15, and the best ventilated 
I ever entered while a school was in session." 

In this case the breadth of the opening prevented crack-blowings, 
and the number of openings was such as to give a free and gentle 
access of air which could not affect any one unless sitting too near 
the window, or unless a current should be produced by wind, in 
which case it would be necessary to close the openings on the wind- 
ward side. 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 373 

to change the whole atmosphere every hour, discharg- 
ing through the ventiducts 66f cubic feet per minute. 
During the hour thus occupied in changing the air 
each inmate discharges about 10 cubic feet of respired 
air from his lungs, and infects fully half as much with 
the exhalations from his person. The diffusion of these 
15 feet through the 250 constitutes, if equally diffused, 
an impurity equal to six per cent of the whole air in 
every part of it. But the diffusion cannot be so rapid. 
The impurities diffuse slowly in a room at 70 to 75 . 
The breath and exhalations do not rise like a sepa- 
rate vapor, but mingle with the surrounding air, and 
soon attaining an equilibrium of temperature cease 
to rise at all and accumulate around and above the 
head of the pupil, just as we see tobacco smoke, 
which is warmer than the common breath, standing 
in thick clouds around the smoker. 

The distal method of ventilation is therefore in- 
competent to furnish a healthy atmosphere without so 
lavish a supply of air as would either be wasteful of 
heat or produce colds and pulmonary irritations by 
the unequal temperature and currents of air. An in- 
stitute in Brooklyn has been severely criticised for its 
imperfect ventilation, and it was stated that the im- 
purity of its air was greater than that of a crowded 
theatre and " three times as great as in the public 
schools of Boston and Philadelphia," and yet the 
room in question had 272 cubic feet of air-space for 
each occupant and a supply of nearly five feet of air 
per minute for each person. Suppose the supply had 
been only four feet per minute or 240 cubic feet per 
hour for each person, such a supply was from 20 to 25 
times the amount of air actually breathed, and yet 
with ample space and this ample supply of air the 
ventilation was deficient and the air impure because 
it was not purified by proximate, but by distal venti- 
lation. If the fire that warms a public hall were built 
in an open crucible and no chimney allowed, it is 
obvious that no possible amount of distal ventilation 
could prevent an intolerable smoking. Just so with 
the gases of vital combustion developed all over the 



374 VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

hall by human beings and not removed by proximate 
ventilation at their origin, but slowly diminished as 
the entire atmosphere is changed — more slowly than 
they are produced. 

The most instructive view is to consider the ap- 
pearances around a group who are vigorously smok- 
ing tobacco; just like that would be the appearance of 
school-rooms if we could see the- breath of the pupils. 
When they have the maximum ventilation which hy- 
gienists demand they have still an imperfect ventila- 
tion, for the supposed room contains at all times nearly 
one hour's accumulation of exhalations just around 
and above the heads of its inmates, sufficient to make 
quite a cloud if we could see it, equal to six per cent 
of the whole air, but just around the pupil equal to 20 
or 30 per cent. 

Such ventilation is not only imperfect in a hygienic 
sense, but wasteful as to heat, requiring in the sup- 
posed room the heating of 4000 cubic feet of air every 
hour, costing 2800 or 3000 units of heat; and still more 
objectionable, as the entrance of 4000 cubic feet of air 
hourly, unless it be warmed as it enters, makes the 
whole apartment unwholesome and dangerous to 
delicate lungs, which are kept in a continual state of 
irritation bordering on a cold. This latter evil is not 
commonly understood, but it is a greater evil than all 
the effects of impure air from limited ventilation. It 
is the foundation of our prevalent diseases of con- 
sumption and pneumonia. 

It is well known that men seldom take cold when 
sleeping in the cold air at any season, or in an open 
cabin, the doors of which are never closed. Colds 
belong almost entirely to close apartments, which are 
elevated to a high temperature, and which receive their 
supply of fresh air drawn in by the draft of the chim- 
ney, through numerous cracks and apertures. These 
strata of cold air in a warm apartment are dangerous 
to health and life. We realize the effect (when ag- 
gravated) by sneezing and feeling that we are catch- 
ing cold, but much oftener experience a malign influ- 
ence in an uncomfortable, irritated condition of the 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 375 

lungs, which is not sufficiently marked to attract our 
notice until it accumulates into a cold. 

Pulmonary irritation is therefore one of the most 
common effects of our unscientific modes of warming 
and ventilation, which at their best do not give us pure 
air, while they do endanger our health. 

The only rational mode of ventilation is to place a venti- 
duct immediately at every source of impurity, and carry 
off all the impure air with as little as possible of the 
pure. 

This is proximate ventilation, by which I would 
supersede the distal ventilation which carries off 
about twenty feet of pure air for one of impure, and 
often a still larger quantity. 

If a small ventiduct is placed at the desk of every 
pupil, as near as practicable and a little above his head, 
it will draw off only the air in his immediate vicinity 
which has been contaminated. If it were applied to 
his nostrils it would remove the respired air by an 
absorption of about 10 cubic feet per hour. If 15 
cubic feet per hour were removed by a ventiduct at 
the pupil's desk the ventilation would be more satis- 
factory and effective than if 300 feet per hour were 
removed on the usual plan by a few ventiducts along 
the walls where the percentage of contamination is the 
least. 

If the small ventiduct at the desk were w r orked up 
to the fashionable hygienic standard of 250 cubic feet 
per hour it would produce an absolutely pure atmos- 
phere, by removing rapidly all the contaminated air 
and bringing in its place a continual and gentle influx 
of pure air to the desk. But there would be no occasion 
for more than one fourth of this amount of aeration; 
60 cubic feet per hour would be an ample amount of 
change. We thus save three fourths of the heat nec- 
essary to warm the air, and all of the pulmonary irrita- 
tion caused by the cold draughts coming into the room 
through cracks and keyholes, besides attaining a pu- 
rity not before known. 

These advantages result from placing the ventiduct 
not on the walls, but near the breathing inmate, the 



376 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 




PROXIMATE 
YENTTLATIOtt 




VENTILATION AND HEALTH. Z77 

advantages of which are mathematically evident. The 
light from a taper diminishes in the ratio of the square 
of the distance. The taper on the desk one foot from 
the book gives a hundred times as much light as if 
placed 10 feet off on the wall. But the absorbent ef- 
fect of a ventiduct aperture at 10 feet distance in the 
open air is little more than l0 1 00 of that which it would 
exert at a distance of one foot. This rule does not ap- 
ply in an apartment, but there is obviously a vast dis- 
parity between the effects of a ventiduct opening at a 
close and at a remote position, and we can easily per- 
ceive the inefficiency of distal ventilation, which is 
much more efficient in bringing in draughts of cold 
air than in purifying the atmosphere of the room. 

Mathematical reasoning, therefore, makes it impera- 
tive that the ventiduct should be close to the pupil at 
his desk, and when we adopt this plan there is no dif- 
ficulty in keeping a pure atmosphere, no matter how 
many persons may be seated in the apartment, or how 
many cigars they may be smoking. 

The futility of the common modes of ventilation is 
readily shown by filling a room with tobacco-smokers, 
or any other sources of unpleasant odors which would 
be offensive in spite of the ventilation. 

The great importance of this principle of proximate 
instead of remote ventilation is conspicuous in its ap- 
plication to the sick-room and hospital. A ventiduct 
immediately above the head of the patient not only 
secures pure air for him, but prevents him from con- 
taminating the air around him, and renders the hos- 
pital safe from atmospheric infection, and almost as 
healthy as an open tent, no matter how crowded. 

These considerations are important in the school- 
room, where we are continually liable to infectious 
influences from pupils who have not been removed 
from school as promptly as they should be, or who 
come from sick chambers, bringing infection with 
them. 

The numerous nuisances arising from offensive se- 
cretions in the breath and perspiration and from per- 
sonal uncleanliness are thoroughly removed by prox- 



378 VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

imate ventilation, and the teacher of the most crowded 
school may thus be sustained by pure air in his ardu- 
ous labors. 

Proximate Ventilation contrasts with distal ventila- 
tion as the natural purification of the body by the 
secretion of the kidneys, skin, and bowels compares 
with the obsolete practice of bleeding, which carries 
off much good blood and very little morbid material. 

The method of arranging for proximate ventilation 
is very simple. Pipes should be laid along the floor 
under the row of seats or desks to be occupied. If 
laid under the floor parallel to the joints they will be 
entirely out of the way. But they may be laid above 
the floor if they do not cross any aisle. These pipes, 
which we may call the foot pipes, should run to one 
at right angles along the base of the wall, from which 
the ventiduct may ascend to the height of the roof. 
The pipes being thus located under each desk, the little 
proximate ventiducts or absorbent pipes, in which lies 
the whole merit of rational ventilation, should rise 
from them at each desk about a foot higher than the 
head of the pupil as he sits. For its mouth or absorb- 
ent of gases there should be a delicate narrow slit 
12 or 1 8 inches long, or a number of small holes on the 
side next the pupil, with a small slide fitting closely over 
it, so that all desks not occupied may be thrown out 
of the system of ventilation and its force concentrated 
on the desks that are occupied. Each pupil should be 
required to open his valve when he takes his seat, and 
it may be closed after his departure if the weather is 
cold to economize heat. 

The size of the slit or mouth of the proximate ven- 
tiduct that should be kept open depends on the sec- 
tional area and speed of the current in the discharging 
ventiduct, which may be calculated, but the whole 
matter will have to be regulated by experience. 

A ventiduct about 32 feet high and one foot square, 
discharging into an external atmosphere 40 degrees 
lower than the temperature of the room, would have 
by the mere force of specific gravity a current of not less 
than three feet per second, and would discharge there- 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 379 

fore (180X60) = 10,800 cubic feet per hour, which is 
about 25 times as much as the room supposed would 
require for proximate ventilation, and more than twice 
as much as it would require for the ordinary wasteful 
ventilation, the room being 20 feet square with 16 
inmates. A pipe four to six inches square would 
therefore meet the requirements of the vertical dis- 
charging ventiduct. A valve in the pipe might serve 
by turning to moderate or arrest the current. 

The ventiduct should be as long as practicable to 
give it draught. If shortened it would be less efficient, 
and its diameter should be increased or the draught in- 
creased by a lamp or gas-light. Whatever the area 
of the discharging ventiduct the mouths or slits for 
absorption should have in the aggregate an equal area. 

If the aggregate sectional area of the mouths should 
exceed that of the ventiduct it would make them lia- 
ble to inequality of action, leaving some desks poorly 
ventilated. If their area should be less, it would be 
favorable to their uniformity of action; but in propor- 
tion as their area is diminished the draught of the dis- 
charging ventiduct should be increased. If for any 
reason the ventiduct cannot be long enough for good 
draught its sectional area may be increased in pro- 
portion as it is shortened, and the size of the absorb- 
ent mouths increased to the same extent. 

But a feeble draught is objectionable, leading to fee- 
bleness and uncertainty in the currents, and if the ven- 
tiduct is short it should have an artificial draught pro- 
duced by heat. A large gas-burner or lamp in the 
ventiduct would accelerate its current materially, but 
the most efficient method would be to pass the stove 
pipe up along its axis. Another method is to pass the 
ventiduct up the chimney-flue, the heat of which, 
when there is a good fire in it, is generally sufficient 
to make the ventiduct effective. A very efficient 
method is to dispense with the ventiduct and connect 
the base pipe directly with the stove. The draught 
of a stove or chimney is abundantly strong, and the 
amount of air required by the fire that warms an 
apartment in winter is more than sufficient for its ven- 



380 VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

tilation, as every bushel of coal requires a supply of 
from twenty to thirty thousand cubic feet of air. 
Hence, if a stove be closed so as to draw all the air 
for combustion from the base pipe mentioned it could 
secure a good ventilation. 

Any apartment, therefore, which has a fire in an 
open grate or open stove must necessarily have ample 
ventilation as regards mere change of air, as sl chimney 
even 20 feet high has a current of from 25 to 50 feet 
per second. In a flue six inches square this would 
produce a discharge of not less than 6^ cubic feet per 
second, 375 per minute, 22,500 per hour, or five times 
the amount required for distal ventilation. Hence, 
chimney ventilation is ample as to quantity. 

If, however, the fireplace be so constructed, being 
very wide at the top, as to let in a great deal of cold 
air to the flue, the temperature of the flue being 
lowered its draught is impaired materially, and the same 
result follows if the fire be too small to fill the flue 
with smoke; but if a fireplace be close, as when a 
blower is placed on it, even a small fire makes a pow- 
erful draught, and the same is true of a stove. 

With the stove or fireplace, therefore, ventilation is 
a matter of course, unless obstructed by soot or ashes. 
The ventilation is ample in quantity, but, like all sys- 
tems of wholesale distal ventilation (ventilation at a 
distance), it is still imperfect in realizing the true aims 
of ventilation in purifying the air at each desk, while 
it generally involves an amount of cold currents 
dangerous to health and life, as do all systems which 
do not warm the air as it comes in. 

The practical conclusion is that ventilators or ven- 
tiducts are of little value in rooms ventilated by the 
chimney and a lively fire, for they only add a little 
more of the same sort of irrelevant unscientific venti- 
lation. 

But when we introduce scientific proximate ventila- 
tion either the fireplace, the stove, or the ventiduct 
becomes amply sufficient to carry off all impurities, 
and if our absorbent apparatus is properly connected 
with the draught of the chimney, which is very strong, 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 38 1 

we might have every desk occupied by a cigar 
smoker, and there would be less odor of tobacco in the 
room than would be perceived from a single cigar in 
rooms depending on the usual unscientific methods of 
ventilation. 

Indeed if it were necessary to give such a test the 
experiment might be made, under proper conditions, 
with a vigorous draught established, of filling every desk 
with a smoker without giving any offensive odor that 
could be recognized at the teacher's chair. 

Ventilation so thorough, sweet, and luxurious as 
this should of course be accompanied by protection 
from cold draughts by warming the entering air. The 
method of warming it by passing through a case 
around the stove pipe is one of the best and most 
economical. It might simply play against the stove, 
or it might pass through flattened pipes in the chim- 
ney, discharging at the ceiling, or it might be intro- 
duced through a case or sleeve inclosing the whole 
length of the stove pipe. 

If we have neither fireplace nor stove, but heat by 
steam-pipe, the ventiducts must be used and. the cold 
air must play against the hot pipes as it enters. Ven- 
tiducts should always be constructed with an opening 
by which to introduce a lamp or gas-light to increase 
the draught. With this addition a small ventiduct will 
be efficient. 

When the fires are put out in the spring the problem 
of ventilation assumes a different shape. The warm 
air of the breath and personal exhalations is continu- 
ally rising, though slowly, and needs to be carried off 
as rapidly as practicable from the ceiling. Hence, 
we think at once of ventiducts opening at the ceiling, 
which may carry off the warm foul air while the fresh 
cool air enters below. Such an arrangement may be 
sufficient for private dwellings and apartments that 
are not crowded, but when there are many occupants 
of an apartment proximate ventilation is the only 
method that is efficient. 

When the thermometer is above ninety the gases 
from the person scarcely rise at all, but collect around 



382 VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

one's head, and in a sultry atmosphere charged with 
our own exhalations we are more oppressed than in 
winter by poor ventilation, unless relieved by the 
breeze through open windows or by proximate venti- 
lation. 

Proximate ventilation is therefore highly important 
in a hot summer, and lamps in the ventiducts will be 
necessary to increase their draught, which may also be 
aided by locating them outside of the walls in the sun- 
shine on the south side of the house. Ventiducts 
should, of course, always be -metallic, to avoid the 
dangers of fire. 

The system of proximate ventilation may be intro- 
duced in hospitals by placing an absorbent pipe at the 
head of each patient's bed, and in churches by placing 
them around the walls, just above the heads of the 
congregation. It would be well also to erect one at 
the ends of each pew. * In theatres they might be 
placed around the walls and at the back of each seat as 
a part of the chair. In school-houses we might substi- 
tute for the vertical pipe at each seat running to a 
base pipe on the floor a horizontal pipe above each 
row of seats, with its opening over the head of each 
pupil, which would be a cheap and simple method, 
and would also furnish a convenience for hanging up 
coats, hats, and books. The cheapest possible method 
would be to run the pipes clear across the room from 
wall to wall, terminating in the base pipe of the ven- 
tiduct at the height of six or six and a half feet. The 
novelty might be laughed at until it became familiar, 
and the vertical pipes would probably be preferred for 
the sake of appearances. 

Apartments only eight feet high might be thor- 
oughly ventilated by absorbent pipes running along 
the ceiling over the heads of each row of pupils. 

Other Means. — The utmost efficiency of ventilation 
may fail to be satisfactory when the floors or walls 
of an apartment are full of impurities or the emana- 
tions of sewers, dead rats, or foul cellars. In such 
cases disinfection becomes necessary. The apartment 
should be closed at night and filled with the fumes of 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 383 

burning sulphur, sulphurous acid gas being one of the 
most powerful disinfectants. 

One part of chloride of zinc or three parts of sul- 
phate of iron dissolved in three hundred parts of 
water will efficiently disinfect water-closets and other 
impure places. A solution of thymol in water which 
dissolves about one-thousandth of its weight may be 
freely used in sprinkling or washing the apartment, as 
it is entirely safe and inoffensive and occupies the 
highest rank among purifying disinfectants. The so- 
lution may be made stronger by using alcohol or 
acetic acid to assist in the solution of the thymol. 

Climatic Difficitlties. — In supplying a wholesome air 
to school-rooms it may be necessary to overcome 
climatic difficulties as well as personal exhalations. 
The cold of winter is overcome by stoves and fur- 
naces, but civilized nations are stolidly slow to realize 
that the oppressive heat of summer may be overcome 
as well as the cold of winter. Yet what is the difficul- 
ty ? Coldness may be obtained by ice-making ma- 
chines as easily as heat by fuel, and a small quantity 
of ice will be sufficient to render any apartment com- 
fortably cool in a torrid climate to the great benefit of 
all concerned. A summer temperature of 75 or 8o° is 
altogether pleasant and wholesome, and the problem 
is to absorb any excess of heat above that amount. 
On a few summer days there will be an excess of 15 , 
but seldom more than io°. The excess of 15 in an 
apartment 20 feet square and 12 feet high, involving, 
if it were empty, 4800 cubic feet of air (but several 
hundred feet less when occupied), would be equivalent 
to less than fifteen hundred units of caloric, as the ca- 
pacity of air for heat is less than a fourth of that of 
water. If the excess should ever amount to 1800 
units it would be absorbed in melting thirteen pounds 
of ice, as a pound of ice absorbs 140 units in melting. 

The chief consumption of ice, however, would not 
be in cooling the air, but in cooling the apartment, its 
walls, floor, and furniture, which, being solid material, 
retain vastly more caloric than the atmosphere. To 
cool the atmosphere, walls, and furniture sufficiently 



384 VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

to make the apartment cool next day might require 
40 or 50 pounds at first, but afterwards much less, 
as the room being continually cool would not need 
much cooling at night. The ice required for cool- 
ing should be placed in a metallic vessel near the 
ceiling, which would enable it to cool all the air and 
also to cool the walls by radiation as well as through 
the air. The apartment should, of course, be tightly 
closed while cooling, especially at the bottoms of 
doors, through which cold air might escape. It would 
not be desirable to cool it below 65 or 70 , and ice 
should be used through the day sufficiently to main- 
tain a proper temperature. This thawing process 
would not have an injurious effect, because the air in 
summer has an excess of the positive condition and 
contains a great deal of moisture, which evolves posi- 
tive elements in condensation. This ice cooling would 
be especially agreeable in the hot and sultry weather 
which is most oppressive, as it would both dry and 
cool the air. 

Protection against heat should not depend entirely 
on ice. The school, if in a cottage edifice, should be 
shaded by trees or the roof should be covered by the 
foliage of vines. If there is not time for perennial 
vines, the morning glories and hop vines make a 
speedy shelter until the honeysuckle, ivy, grape, and 
flowering creepers give their shade. 

The walls should be massive. Thick-walled build- 
ings are a great protection against heat. The thin 
modern shells we sometimes see are like bake-ovens 
in the sun. A wooden building should have at least 
eight inches of saw-dust between the external shell 
and internal plastering, and a similar arrangement at 
the roof — a board-ceiling being first fastened on, the 
saw-dust laid on that, and the shingling or tiles above 
it. The objections to wood-work may be removed by 
fire-proofing this timber and covering it with metallic 
paints. Such a house would not be penetrated by the 
sun's heat. 

Thus by means of shade, substantial edifices, and 
ice we may defy the summer's heat, and by means of 






VENTILATION AND HEALTH 385 

wholesome vegetation around, with ozone and thymol 
within the house we may also defy malaria, obtaining 
that health and comfort at small expense for which 
our citizens expend millions in rushing to the sea-shore 
and the mountains. 

Finally. — In the pure air of perfectly-ventilated, 
sunny, and flower-surrounded halls children will find 
healthier influences than in their own homes, and they 
will partake of the contagion of health and animal 
spirits, for health is as contagious as disease. 

The teachers should be persons of good health — their 
good moral health is indispensable. All will attain 
higher health in a school of true education in which 
the emotions roused by song and by social harmony 
exert a powerful hygienic influence. 



ADDENDA. 

Gross neglect of ventilation appears to be so common 
and ignorance on this subject so prevalent that it may 
help to overcome the public apathy to refer to the ex- 
tent of these evils. 

Complaints of improper ventilation, very impure 
air, draughts, cold, and variable temperatures are pub- 
lished in reference to many colleges — Amherst, Wil- 
liams, Yale, Harvard, Cornell, Syracuse, Columbia, 
Dartmouth, Racine, Tuft's, Wesleyan, and Boston Uni- 
versities and others, and recent investigations show 
that Oxford University (England) is very defective in 
this respect. Some years ago there was an epidemic 
of cerebro-spinal meningitis in one of the schools of 
Paris, owing to defective drainage. 

How dull must be the moral sensibility which 
would tolerate for a single day the gross condition of 
certain New York schools. The following example is 
perhaps the worst. The report is from the N.Y. Sun: 

"On the lower or ground story of Public School No. 53, on 79th 
Street, near Third Avenue, are two rooms, occupied by the smallest 



3 86 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 



children in the primary department, little tots supposed to be be- 
tween the ages of 5 and 7 years, but many of them little if any 
more than 4. Over the black-board in each room is a placard 
bearing the averment, put there by official orders, ' This room ac- 
commodates 73.' Even were the apartments in other respects 
suitable for the uses to which they are put, that would be an over- 
estimate of their capacity. Foul gases rise from the closets, rush 
into those two rooms, and roll up the back-stairs toward the other 
branches of the primary department above, in such volume as to 
sicken strangers who undertake to explore the place. In cold, 
clear weather, and especially upon Monday mornings, when the 
rooms have had two days' ventilation and purification, the offence 
is least, but in damp, foggy, and warm weather it is actually poison- 
ous. 

" Miss W. M. Bonesteel, principal of the primary department, 
said: ' No teacher has ever served in either of those rooms without 
feeling their bad effects, and some have been made seriously ill 
there. I endeavor to change them around as much as possible, so 
as not to leave any one there longer than can be avoided, but a 
teacher who is at all delicate suffers from exposure to that atmos- 
phere for a single day. Miss Marion Ellsworth, the last teacher 
who was made sick down there, was laid up during the holidays, 
and upon return to duty brought me a certificate from her physi- 
cian, Dr. J. Ralsey White, of 221 East 124th Street, in which he 
wrote: " I have no hesitancy in saying that no teacher can remain 
in the room formerly occupied by bearer (Miss Ellsworth) without 
becoming an invalid, as there is no proper ventilation and no way 
of getting it. The sickness of Miss Ellsworth is entirely due to 
being confined to this room, and whoever occupies it will be sick.'' 
If you will talk with the teachers who have served in those rooms 
you will be assured that the doctor's emphatic averment is not at 
all too strong. I myself cannot spend half an hour there without 
having a headache. Whenever I am down in those rooms for pur- 
poses of examination or any other duty I suffer from sensations 
of nausea, oppression in breathing, and drowsiness.' 

" Miss Amy Mirick said : ' I was in one of those lowest primary 
rooms last spring, and was sick when I went home at the beginning 
of the summer vacation on June 24. I had typhoid pneumonia, and 
my physician, Dr. Cheeseman, of 5 East 27th Street, said it was 
caused by the air in our class-room. When I returned to school on 
September 23 I had even then hardly recovered my health. For- 
tunately for me I was transferred then to an upstairs room. Had 
I been required to resume my former place I think it would have 
prostrated me again.' 

" Miss Carrington, who is now teaching in one of the poisonous 
rooms, said : ' I have been here three months, and have had head- 
aches and a constant succession of colds and sore throats all the 
time. I am not very delicate, but I feel that this air is telling upon 
me very painfully. How the children endure it I cannot imagine. 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH, 387 

They have sore throats and colds a great deal, and in the after- 
noons, when the air is always worst, and in close, warm days, they 
are very drowsy, not so much because the poor little tots are weary 
with the long hours, as that they are made languid and stupefied 
by the foul, oppressive atmosphere they have to breathe.' 

"Miss Sarah Peterson said : ' I was down stairs in the fall term, 
but happily escaped from there before I became seriously ill. The 
children were always suffering with headaches, and in the afternoons 
some of the little creatures were crying with the sickness, weariness, 
and pain induced by the abominable air they had to breathe. The 
smell in those rooms was enough to sicken a person unaccustomed 
to it, and, what made it worse, the glaring sun came in upon the 
children's faces, so that we had to close the blinds, and that shut 
out the little draught of air we might otherwise have had. You can 
have no idea of the heat, stench, and oppression in those abomina- 
ble rooms in warm and wet days. Some of the children were only 
able to come to school during the forenoons. They were delicate, 
and could not endure the afternoons when the conditions were 
worst.' 

"Miss Purroy, principal of the grammar department, said: 
1 Those rooms should not be used for class-rooms at all. Their 
vicinity to the closets, the lowness of their ceilings, and the impos- 
sibility of ventilating them render them intolerable and dangerous 
to the lives of all compelled to remain in them for any length of 
time. The attention of the Board of Health has been called to 
them. An inspector came up, sniffed at them, said they were very 
bad, and went away; and that is trie last we have heard from that 
direction. The matter was brought to the knowledge of the Board 
of Education. A Commissioner came up, took a whiff of our ac- 
customed lower primary atmosphere, looked disgusted, and went 
away, saying it was too bad; and that was the last we heard from 
him. During the vacation there was a large sum expended on the 
building — some $17,000, I understand — in fire-escapes and other 
very good things; but those rooms remain as abominable as ever. 
It is an inhuman thing to keep little children in such places. It is 
bad enough to subject the poor teachers to a course of poisoning; 
but how infinitely worse to confine helpless, delicate children, mere 
infants, in such places.' " 



THE VENTILATING GRATE AND STOVE. 

Since the greater part of this volume had been put 
in type I have had the great pleasure of seeing that my 
suggestions as to free ventilation by grates and stoves 
have been happily embodied in the ventilating grates 
and stoves of Dr. A. R. Morgan, which have been tested 
by experience and given universal satisfaction. 



383 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH, 



In the engravings herewith presented the reader 
will see by the section through the middle of the fire- 
place that the cold air entering by the back of the 
grate or stove and passing over its top is thoroughly 
heated before it enters the apartment in the current 
indicated by the arrows. As the burning of a bushel 
of coal attracts and sends up the chimney about 25,- 
000 cubic feet of air, and this amount may be doubled 
by enlarging the flue or increasing its draught, and as 
this amount of air must enter the apartment, it fol- 
lows that even a moderate fire would enable us to in- 




troduce from one to three thousand cubic feet of air 
every hour. If this supply of air is heated as it enters 
it will at once occupy the upper part of the apartment 
in an equable manner and gradually descend to supply 
the space afforded by the air withdrawn by the chim- 
ney. In an apartment sixteen feet square a supply of 
two thousand feet hourly would change nearly the en- 
tire atmosphere of the apartment (if ten feet high), 
and give to each occupant, if allowed an area of five 
feet square, two hundred cubic feet of fresh air per 
hour. If the apartment be more crowded it will be 
necessary only to increase the draught of the stove or 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH 



339 



grate and meet all the indispensable requirements of 
ventilation. That we may have all the air required 
was shown in the use of a No. 16 stove (an interme- 
diate size) by Prof. Youmans, who found that it intro- 
duced into the apartment 5600 cubic feet of air per hour, 
at the temperature of 160°^ and when better arranged 
for ventilation 10,322 feet per hour. In all the reported 
observations the temperature of the apartments thus 




£JUtXl!U^I -^^fcil-lPr^riiilg M^MA 



heated was remarkably uniform, not varying more 
than 5 in different places. 

This great improvement, which has been universally 
commended and which has received medals at the 
United States Centennial Exposition in 1876 and the 
Paris Exposition in 1878, is still ignored in New York 
and some other large cities, owing to the ignorance or 
corruption of the authorities.* 

When I say that this method of ventilation meets all 
indispensable demands, I do not mean that it is at all 

* A member of the New York Board of Education pronounced 
" this talk about ventilation all — poppycock." 



390 VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

equal to proximate ventilation, or that it could cope 
with the exhalations of tobacco smoke and disease so 
as to make them harmless. We need proximate ven- 
tilation in every apartment in which men smoke 
tobacco, or in which the exhalations of the sick contam- 
inate the atmosphere. An absorbent aperture is nec- 
essary over the head of every invalid couch and over 
the head of every smoker. Theatres, churches, res- 
taurants, shops, and offices should have these ventilating 
pipes and apertures around the walls and on each col- 
umn at a height of about five feet to absorb rapidly all 
human emanations and carry them to a ventilating 
shaft or a stove, and similar openings should be locat- 
ed above every lamp and gas-light. 



THE PANT0L0GICAL UNIVERSITY. 

While this volume was passing through the press 
many expressions of sympathy with the author's 
views induced him to believe that the time had arrived 
for the commencement of a new educational move- 
ment, to realize in collegiate institutions the principles 
which have been partially illustrated in this volume, 
in which, however, I have barely alluded to the philo- 
sophic and scientific departments of a full-orbed edu- 
cation. 

Institutions established in harmony with the highest 
ethical principles must necessarily be in a different 
sphere of thought and controlled by a widely different 
philosophy from that of the unethical, pedantic, dog- 
matic, agnostic, materialistic, and often pessimistic lit- 
erature and sentiment which generally dominate to- 
day. They must be in harmony, not with past false- 
hoods which have survived their time, but with those 
truths of the future to which the mass of the present 
generation is insensible. 

In breadth of thought, boldness of investigation, and 
hospitality to all knowledge they should be pantolog- 
ical or all-knowing — not governed by the paltry con- 



VENTILATION AND HEALTH, 39 1 

ception that we have nearly attained the " limits of 
human knowledge" but by the consciousness that hu- 
manity is just passing beyond its infantile stage of de- 
velopment, and that the infinity of divine wisdom es- 
tablishes an endless career of progress. 

Visionary as this may seem to those whose eyes 
have been steadily fixed upon the past and the pres- 
ent, to whom the future is all dark, I have never failed 
to make it apparent to all who have gone with me 
through the inductive science of anthropology and 
have thus learned the basic laws of life and progress. 
Xor do I suppose that any one who has not thus 
reached the basis of true philosophy, unless highly 
gifted with intuition, would agree with me in reference 
to the future of science and human progress, and the 
vast difference between a pantological university and 
all the institutions which have preceded it. Xor would 
the limits of this postscript admit of any explanation 
of the character and possibilities of such an institution. 

To the majority of my readers I can but say that 
something of the character and aims of a pantological 
university may be inferred from the contents of this 
volume, and that for its special scientific departure 
from the meagre philosophy and science of colleges I 
must refer to the practical operation of the depart- 
ment which is first to be organized at Boston — the med- 
ical department — which will be called the Pantolog- 
ical College of Therepeutics. 

Unless this college shall manifest a vast superiority 
over prior institutions in its accuracy of diagnosis, in 
its more extensive equipment of therapeutic agencies, 
in its better comprehension of disease and greater suc- 
cess in its cure, in its mastery of the intricate problems 
of pathology and insanity, and in the general superi- 
ority of its graduates, the public may rightly conclude 
that these anticipations have been inspired more by 
hope and enthusiasm than by science. But if experi- 
ment shall demonstrate the superiority now claimed, 
and show that the medical art may be made philo- 
sophic and satisfactory to a rational mind, it will not 
be unreasonable to anticipate that liberal pantological 



39 2 VENTILATION AND HEALTH. 

science and philosophy will supersede the narrow dog- 
matism which at present oppresses humanity. 

Buchanan's system of anthropology. 

For more than twenty years this work has been out 
of the market, the first edition having been rapidly 
sold. Many have been looking anxiously for a new 
edition, which, however, numerous engagements have 
caused the author to postpone, undecided indeed 
whether to re-issue the manual first published with 
necessary improvements or to issue a full edition. 

The material on hand at present, but not ready for 
the press, would require at least 13 volumes, on — 
1, Cerebral Physiology; 2, Cerebral Psychology; 3, 
Pneumatology; 4, Sarcognomy; 5, Psychometry; 6, 
Pathognomy; 7, Insanity; 8, Pathology; 9, Physiog- 
nomy; 10, Animal Magnetism; n, Sociology; 12, Ed- 
ucation, and, 13, Criticism, or Review of Philosophy. 

My life may not be sufficiently prolonged to com- 
plete this programme as I wish, but if not there will 
be at least a synoptic view of the whole subject issued 
in one volume, but with present engagements I dare 
not say when. The first imperfect edition elicited the 
following notices: 

" We have no hesitation in asserting the great superi- 
ority of the form in which it is presented by Dr. Bu- 
chanan, whether we regard its practical accuracy or its 
philosophical excellence." — American Magazine of Ho- 
mceopathy. 

" Indicative of great ability and industry, no less 
than of sincerity on the part of the author." — North 
American Review. 

" Beyond all doubt it is a most extraordinary work, 
exhibiting the working of a mind of no common 
stamp. Close students and hard thinkers will find it 
a rich treat, a deep and rich mine of thought." — Gos- 
pel Herald, Cincinnati. 

" A new teacher, a profound thinker is addressing 
the age, and is destined to make a profound impres- 
sion, if not upon all his contemporaries, at least upon 
the foremost thinkers of the time." — Scalpel. 



ON THE MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN. 

BY MRS. ELIZABETH THOMPSON. 

In reading the wise suggestions of Prof. Buchanan 
concerning the omnipotence of the moral nature and 
the necessity of diffusing the spirit of kindness 
through all educational processes, I was led into remi- 
niscences and reflections which made me desire to 
add a little postscript to this interesting volume, to 
which Prof. B. has kindly consented. 

Many years ago I went to a juvenile asylum at 
Boston, where I saw a girl about nine years of age, 
whose wan countenance struck me as possessing some- 
thing rather peculiar or spiritual. The poor child, 
however, seemed ill at ease in the asylum. There was 
no cheerfulness in her face, no brightness in her eyes. 
She was not a favorite, and they complained of her 
dullness and inability to learn. Still I was attracted 
to her, and thought I would take her home with me. 

Arrived at home I tried to overcome her fears, and 
assured her that I would be her friend; but still she 
gave the same timid glance and had the same spirit- 
less manner. But continued kindness slowly inspired 
her with confidence ; there was a marked change in 
three weeks. Her physical constitution improved 
under the better diet, and her face acquired the cheer- 
ful expression seen in children who have enjoyed a 
mother's love. She improved in every way under the 
regimen of kindness, and in three months she became 
one of the healthiest, brightest and smartest children 
I have known — a perfect contrast to the pale wretched 
weakling I found at the asylum. 

Ah! how many children are there in asylums, 
schools and stranger families, where they live, or 



394 THE MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN. 

rather vegetate, without the sunshine of love, who 
grow up with their moral natures starved and stinted, 
until they can neither enjoy life themselves nor yield 
any pleasure to others! How necessary is it that 
nurses, superintendents and teachers should possess 
a rich endowment of that love which is the harmoniz- 
ing and developing power of childhood! How neces- 
sary, too, that in all our dealings with children we 
should act in the spirit of kindness and endeavor to 
make child-life a period of happiness! for it is only by 
such means that a normal development of body and 
mind can be attained. A childhood deprived of love, 
unprovided with proper food, burdened with task-work 
in text-books and borne down with reproaches is hap- 
pily relieved by death. 

I recollect how much I was pleased in visiting a 
juvenile institution in a more Southern city^ where the 
little boys were indulged in freedom and natural de- 
velopment in the industrial way so strongly advo- 
cated by Prof. Buchanan. There were no pallid facet 
nor timidly averted eyes. The little fellows took a 
lively interest in their little tools and workshops, and 
those who had charge of the poultry manifested as 
much interest as any bird-fancier, and talked with 
animation and a correct knowledge about the differ- 
ent breeds of fowls and their peculiar qualities for 
laying eggs and raising chickens or furnishing a good 
fowl for the table. They were studying nature and 
learning these things in a natural and interesting way, 
just as children might learn everything if we would 
kindly provide them with the objects and the means 
of acquiring natural history from natural objects in- 
stead of tedious and dull printed pages. 

There is nothing more uniformly pleasing than the 
acquisition of knowledge. This is the charm of travel 
and of conversation. Children never weary of learn- 
ing in the natural way — the way in which the scien- 
tist develops science or gathers fresh knowledge — 
but it must be fresh. The dried and lifeless remains 
of knowledge which are packed into text-books are 
very indigestible to the young. 



THE MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN. 395 

The Kindergarten rightly conducted is a happy il- 
lustration of these principles. The first object is to 
make the children happy and develop their amiable 
qualities. A loving teacher is indispensable. In the 
true Kindergarten children grow in body and soul : 
it is a true education. Their limbs are not cramped 
by confinement, and their eyes are not wearied by 
being fixed too long on any object. There is no 
weariness at all; only healthy development of every 
faculty. The younger the children, the more is the 
time devoted to physiological and moral development, 
health, happiness and good manners. These are the 
most necessary, as Prof. Buchanan truly asserts. 
Then, as the infant brain matures, we have construc- 
tive art and perceptive exercises, but the moral and 
physiological still predominate. Industrial art as an 
amusement or pleasure naturally comes next, and 
last of all the more laborious process of acquiring 
knowledge. Thus we should gradually change from 
the first occupations for children in the Kindergarten 
to the training for developed minds and constitutions, 
in which the physiological, moral, industrial and in- 
tellectual are combined harmoniously. But we should 
never lose the great basis of education, the physio- 
logical and moral. When we neglect those elements, 
education becomes a curse rather than a blessing. 
There should be an unbroken continuity from the 
Kindergarten to the highest professional school, the 
only change being the gradual increase of energetic 
work for body and mind as they acquire a stronger 
fibre. 

I hope this volume may be the means of rousing 
our countrymen to the great errors now existing, and 
bringing into collegiate education the all-enriching 
and ennobling power of love and duty. 



Moral Education. 

By Prof. BUCHANAN. 

$1-50 PEE OOIE>"Y\ 

Copies may be obtained by remitting the price in 
Postal Order or Registered Letter to the Author, 

"Dr. J. R. Buchanan, 

205 East 36/A Street, New York. 
Care of S. W. GREEN'S SON, 74 Beekman St., New York." 

ft^T Local Agents iv anted. 



* 6 54 



#' 


■>, 




& r ^ 




O * / 


















.* v ^ 







A' </> 










& '+*.. 



^* % *r 




































. 





















'/ *p 









